Gulf State Park Pier closed after Ida

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. - Only four months after opening, the Gulf State Park Pier is closed for repairs. The pier suffered minor damage caused by the huge surf generated by Tropical Storm Ida.

As night fell on Monday, the surf built higher and higher and the pier got its first real test. The 1,500 foot pier is decked with hundreds of blow-out panels and many of them did just that.

“It performed the way it was designed. As the waves crashed underneath the pier, as they hit the pilings, the water shot straight out and blew these panels out,” said Trey Myers, assistant superintendent of Gulf State Park.

The pier never lost power during the storm, so it's security cameras recorded throughout the night. The video showed huge waves crashing over the end of the pier and then intermittently blowing out the 300 pound panels for several hundred feet. The powerful waves launched some of the panels over 15 feet in the air. When they came crashing down, some exposed plumbing and electrical lines were damaged.

“We didn’t expect as much electrical and plumbing damage as what we had. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it just wasn’t something we were expecting,” Myers said.

Work crews have spent the last couple of days evaluating the damage and starting on repairs. Park officials hope to have half of the pier ready to open by this weekend, but it will take longer to get the whole pier ready for visitors again.

Myers is optimistic that the repairs won’t take too long.

“We are hoping that within two to three weeks we can have the pier fully operational again,” he said.

Meanwhile, the gift shop and snack bar will be open daily from 7:00 in the morning until 11:00 at night.

The new pier took nearly two years to build and cost over $16 million. It is almost twice as long as the old pier, which was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.