Another piece of the Flagler Beach Pier breaks off, remains lodged in the water nearby
A piece of the battered Flagler Beach Pier has broken off but it hasn’t gone too far.
The piece, which appears to be a piling, has drifted just north of the pier and is bobbing in the surf. It has a rod sticking out of the top. As the waves roll past, the object becomes momentarily submerged before reappearing.
Tom Gillin, the ocean rescue director for Flagler Beach, said lifeguards noticed it about two weeks ago swinging back and forth, but still attached to the pier. Then it broke off.
“It’s heavy,” he said. “There’s a big piece connected to the bottom of it and that’s why it’s staying in the position that it’s in right now and it’s not moving.”
He said it might be a piling with fiberglass sheathing on the bottom, which might be the reason it is stuck.
The pier has been closed since Tropical Storm Ian tore off a chunk of the iconic wooden structure in September 2022.
But Ian was not the first to pummel the pier. Hurricane Irma damaged it in 2017. Hurricane Matthew bit off 160 feet in 2018. The damage from Matthew closed the pier for more than eight months and cost more than $900,000 to repair.
Ian also damaged the Daytona Beach Pier and the Sunglow Pier in Daytona Beach Shores. While the Daytona Beach Pier has since reopened, the Sunglow Pier and its restaurant, Crabby Joe's, remains closed.
While work has not started yet, Flagler Beach is in the process of replacing the battered structure with a tougher pier supported by concrete structures.
Gillin said people should not be swimming or surfing within 150 feet of the pier. And the debris is within that area.
“People shouldn’t be close to the pier anyway. So as long as it’s there, it doesn’t pose a danger to anybody”
He said the plan is to haul it out of the water. But he is not optimistic that will work. He believes a larger, heavier section of the object is underwater.
“We will try to do is get a tow rope out there and see if we can try to pull it up on the beach and get it out of the way,” Gillin said. “My suspicion is that we are not going to be able to do that. Just by how little it’s actually moving. It’s almost like an iceberg.”
If they can’t remove it, they will put a marker on it to make it more visible.
Crews will dismantle what’s left of the pier and remove it to make way for the new structure. At a previous meeting officials said the new pier would open in 2026.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Flagler Beach Pier piece breaks off, but doesn't go far
