Bluff collapse shuts down access to Beacon’s Beach in Encinitas; no injuries reported

A portion of the bluffs below Beacon’s Beach in Encinitas collapsed late Sunday or early Monday, damaging the trail that leads from the parking lot to the beach, city officials said.

(File photo)

No injuries were reported from the landslide, which created “numerous visible cracks in the existing slope” below the beach’s public parking lot, according to a news release from Encinitas officials.

In response, authorities have indefinitely closed the parking lot and the beach-access trail, which are located along Neptune Avenue between Jasper Street and West Leucadia Boulevard.

City officials described the new collapse as “the northern portion of an existing historic landslide.” An early inspection “appears to indicate that the landslide movement was slow, and that the movement has stopped,” city officials said.

Engineering and geotechnical staff from the city will monitor the area for 30 to 90 days to “evaluate the landslide area for potential future instability,” city officials said. The parking lot and trail are expected to remain closed during that time.

According to the city, the coastal bluffs near Beacon’s Beach — which is part of Leucadia State Beach, but operated by the city — were damaged by landslides during winter storms in 1982 and 1983, and then experienced additional collapse in 1990 in the same area. But between then and the collapse this week, “the area has seen very little (landslide) movement for the last approximately 30 years,” city officials said in the news release.

Beacon’s Beach is about a mile south of Grandview Surf Beach, where a bluff collapse in August 2019 killed three women from the same family.