By Joseph Kellard
In the blink of an eye, the three young girls from Paterson, N.J., were swept away by strong riptides on the morning of July 23, before lifeguards were scheduled to come on duty.
"From what I've read," Steve Kohut, chief of Long Beach's lifeguards, said, "the girls couldn't swim, and they were only swimming in water up to their knees when they were swept away."
One week after the tragedy, sunbathers in Long Beach said they make a point of staying as close as possible to lifeguards.
Colleen Pearl of Oceanside, who often visits the beach with her two young children, said, "When we come down here now, we stay by the lifeguards, especially with the little ones."
The same could be said of Maria Quijano of Westbury, who has dipped into the Long Beach surf for 27 years. "I've always felt safe here," she said. "I make sure I swim close to the lifeguards."
Long Beach hosts approximately 2 million beach-goers each year and employs about 100 lifeguards to keep an eye on swimmers from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., seven days a week during the summer season.
David Kesting, formerly of Florida and now living in Manhattan, swims in Long Beach once a week and feels totally safe, he said. However, he believes lifeguards could use a new system that indicates to swimmers why they are blowing their whistles.
"At some beaches in Florida, when the lifeguards blow their whistles, they wave different colored flags that mean different things," Kesting said. "Like, if someone is swimming too far or if there's a shark. Those beaches also post flags to tell people how far they are allowed to go out in the water, whether up to their knees or waists. In Long Beach, if the water is too choppy and they want you to go in the water only waist-deep, they tell you at the ticket booth. Otherwise, there's no way to know the rules for that day."
It didn't take any instructions for Luis Lopez and his family to shy away from Tuesday's rough surf at the beach. For three years, Lopez, his wife and young daughter have come to Long Beach to enjoy the cool sea breezes. "I don't know how to swim," Lopez said, "so I stay right around the edges of the water."
Fatal tides
The water in Long Beach, Kohut explained, flows geographically from east to west, but tides are north and south. This north-south flow that moves perpendicular to the shore is called a rip current.
"The main cause of a rip current is the surf," Kohut said. "As the wave breaks on the shore, the water rushes up and then it rushes back out to sea. It finds the deepest channel and then runs out perpendicular to the shore."
Riptides, Kohut explained, move parallel to the shore. "Basically, in an ocean, the only place you will find riptides is in inlets. In saltwater bays and inlets, tides create incoming and outgoing currents. Because of the tide motions, riptides are stronger than rip currents. They run parallel, and that makes them stronger, and a tide in an inlet is [BEGIN ITALIC TYPE]simply [END ITALIC TYPE]stronger. That's nature.
"And keep in mind," Kohut said, "in a riptide there's no lull, while there is a lull with rip current. With a riptide, it is a constant force. People are drawn rapidly into deep water."
Although Kohut said it is impossible to say exactly what type of water flow causes people to drown, a riptide likely pulled the three New Jersey girls into the middle of the Rockaway inlet, less than an hour before lifeguards were expected on duty there at 10 a.m.
No stranger to tragedy
The deaths in Rockaway reminded some residents of the five drownings off Long Beach during the past two summers. Lifeguards were off duty in each drowning.
During the early morning Aug. 1, 1999, a man and a woman drowned off the rock jetties separating Edwards and Riverside boulevards. Earlier that summer, in the same exact location, a Queens woman also drowned. In June 2000, just after lifeguards went home, a 12-year-old Canarsie boy swimming approximately 35 feet offshore suddenly disappeared. His body washed ashore days afterward. Two months later, a Bronx teenager entered the ocean with his brothers during the early evening and was swept out 50 to 75 yards offshore and drowned.
Kohut said what beach-goers should learn from those who drowned is a major safety tip: don't swim when lifeguards are off duty. He also stressed that people unable to swim stay out of the ocean. "You'd be surprised how many people who can't swim go in the water. They may just go in up to their knees and be drawn into the ocean."
Kohut also said people must consider the seriousness behind water's force in the ocean. It is no different from when people drive their cars through a puddle thinking it's not deep, but wind up getting stuck, he said.
Among Long Beach lifeguards' greatest task is keeping people away from the rock jetties. Besides similar jetties in Atlantic Beach, Long Beach is the only beach on the south shore that has jetties, which Kohut said were built in the 1930s for erosion purposes. "We're very diligent about keeping people away from the rock jetties," he said.
Roy Lester, a trustee of the Long Beach school board and for 34 years a lifeguard at Jones Beach, praised Long Beach's jetties and rope-buoy system in its swimming areas, which he said help make the beach safer.
Lester also said that the ground off the shore, which steepens gradually, makes for safer swimming in Long Beach. In certain sections of Jones Beach, the ground goes abruptly from shallow to deep.
"Jones Beach has what's called shore breaks, which means a wave breaks on very shallow water, and the effect of that is that it can cause dislocated shoulders and snapped necks," Lester said. "If a wave breaks on sand, you are going to be thrown into the sand, and that's where the injuries come in. We've had people here break their necks and backs. And we have a lot more of those injuries than we do drowning."
Certain fields at Jones Beach are open from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. "Very often, if there are crowds here, we will stay open late and keep our lifeguards on duty," Lester said.
Several beach-goers said they would like to see Long Beach extend lifeguard hours into the evening, which Kohut said is not feasible for the city.
"If Long Beach extends its hours to 7 o'clock, then we'll have to extend them to 8. We are not in the same position as parks, which keep their parking lots open until dusk, so their lifeguards have to stay there until that time."
Alexander Needham of Oceanside, who has swam and surfed at Long Beach for 14 years, disagreed. "Lifeguards can stay here until nine at night. With the money that's paid in taxes, for safety reasons they can have the lifeguards out here longer. Teens come down after hours so they don't have to pay. I think the lifeguards can stay here until then."
