The beach situation with the tides taking away a lot of the structures built too close to the ocean continues and the authorities are doing a pretty good job with the limited tools they have to prevent a total collapse of the walkway. It is getting dangerously close to a collapse of the walkway and that would be pretty disastrous because a lot of the tourism here is dependent on this boardwalk existing. Even though it would probably make sense to just give up they can't really do that since everything about this part of town revolves around the existence of this beach walkway.
A few years ago when this happened before, someone came along and suggested (I'm guessing) that a bunch of coconut trees on the beach would help to strengthen the soil and prevent the sand and dirt from just being taken out to sea. I would imagine that is the reason why natural shorelines around the world aren't simply washed away every year and since the shoreline has really taken a beating in the past month we are seeing how effective the trees have actually been in holding things together.
You can see here that they are really trying hard to prevent this particular tree from falling down and for now, the only reason why it hasn't fallen is because of the multiple tethers that are holding it up. Without that, it would have already fallen and the soil would have went with it. The roots are completely exposed on this particular tree and I was able to get up close and see how incredibly extensive the root system actually is.
Those red lines are the root system of this one tree and to me anyway, someone who knows very little about trees, this is quite impressive especially when you consider that this tree and most of the other ones on the Da Nang beach were transplanted there a few years ago. Since all the soil ripped away from the wall I think we can successfully determine that the only reason why any of that soil is still there is specifically because of this one tree.
I don't know how deep the walkway itself goes into the ground but in past seasons, large portions of the walkway have collapsed and this of course is dangerous for the people that walk up and down this beach and it would probably turn people off from coming here if it was destroyed.
At the moment there are about 200 meters of sandbags encased in mesh fencing and there is a team of excavators that work during the day to relocate sand to other places where it is needed. I am sure they know what they are doing because it does seem to be working, kind of. But someone said the other day a statement that kind of makes a lot of sense. Doing this each year is kind of like putting a Band-Aid on a massive wound. It doesn't do anything to solve the very real problem here. While the trees and the temporary measures are working for now, we haven't really had any bad storms and if we were to get one, I think that the things they have done thus far would likely fail.
I hope it doesn't fail because even though I am not a tourist the beach walkway is a regular and enjoyable part of my life! Just a few more weeks to go before the weather changes and the sea levels return to an break point much further out. Then I guess the rebuilding can begin!