Wave washes Jersey Honorary Police Officer off feet

An honorary police officer is recovering after being knocked off her feet and washed across a road by a wave.

Lisa Stubbs was on duty directing traffic on Saturday at the La Mare slip as strong winds and high tides raged.

She suffered bruising and damaged her elbow after being swept about 25ft (7m) across the road, but carried on with her duties.

St Clement Chef De Police, Centenier Eddie Caldeira, praised the officer.

He said there had been an unusually high number of calls praising the force.

The Havre des Pas area of St Helier was covered in seaweed after tides hit

Miss Stubbs said she was only doing what she had been trained to do as an honorary police officer.

She said: "It was scary, the emotion going through my mind was to protect my head, that is all I was thinking about.

"It wasn't until I hit the wall that I realised where I was going.

"[I used] my feet and my hands against the wall, and my left side of my body really, to stop my head hitting the wall, the floor and anything else coming up with that wave."

Footage of the officer being caught by the wave has been watched by tens of thousands of people after it was posted on YouTube.

Sections of coastal road have been ripped up by waves and stones and there has been some coastal flooding.

About 500 tonnes of rock fell on to Plemont beach

Havre des Pas was left covered in seaweed brought in by the tides and a rockfall in Plemont caused the beach to be closed.

St Ouen Chef De Police, Centenier Roy Le Bas said about 500 tonnes of rock fell from the cliff.

He said the beach would not reopen until engineers had assessed the dangers.

In Grouville, a shipping container used as a kitchen for a beach-side Thai food shack was wrenched free from its heavy-duty chain moorings and pulled along the beach.

Beachside businesses were destroyed across the south coast including Dom's Beach Shack at Gorey

The beach shack and a nearby hut were destroyed by the waves.

Transport Minister Deputy Kevin Lewis said clean-up was under way across the island but was likely to take some time.

He also warned people not to put themselves in danger to watch the extreme weather.

He said some people chose risky vantage points over the weekend to view the weather's impact.

Laurence Chay, a manager at the Watersplash restaurant in St Ouen, said he was grateful to people who answered a call on social media to help after the wall of a surf shop was destroyed by waves.

A container used as a kitchen for a food shack was ripped from its moorings and dragged along the beach

"It was a crowd inside but outside the wind was ferocious and the tide was almost to the height of the sea wall. A lot of damage was done to the ground surface and things directly in front of the restaurant.

"When you looked out the window it would go from pitch black to extreme white as the waves came up against the window.

"Nobody looked out towards the surf shack but once the tide has subsided I got on to Facebook and put an SOS out and about seven people turned up and helped me pull all the important things to run the business again to safety."