Officials Hope to Find Cause of Huntington Beach Rampage

The Huntington Beach City Council will meet tonight to begin looking into the causes of Sunday’s riot that caused at least $150,000 worth of damage to vehicles and equipment.

Even as small crowds milled near the oil-blackened sand surrounding the lifeguard headquarters at the Huntington Beach pier, officials pondered what had sparked the rampage.

“I’ve worked here 25 years, I’ve seen three riots here, and this is by far the worst,” said Marine Safety Capt. Bill Richardson Richardson, 42. He was standing beneath the bullet hole in the ceiling of the headquarters garage, where he fired a warning shot Sunday afternoon to disperse rioters.

In all, police arrested 10 rioters, each on one charge of felony assault on a police officer. Two of those arrested were minors.

On Monday, cyclists in shorts and spandex sped over the scarred ashphalt driveway behind the main lifeguard station near the Huntington Beach pier, where charred silhouettes were the only sign that police cars had been burned there less than 24 hours earlier.

“The beach looks pretty much normal,” said Mike H. Sherman, 23, Huntington Beach, as he strolled down the sand lugging a beach bag and chair. “It doesn’t look like there was a major altercation. It looks like just another day at Huntington Beach.”

On Sunday, hundreds of youths who were among 70,000 drawn to a professional surfing competition went on a rampage, pelting police officers with rocks and bottles, storming a large lifeguard station and overturning and burning five police vehicles.

At least two council members, Don MacAllister and Ruth Finley, said Monday that they hoped the Op Pro Surfing Championships would not be lost to the city.

Among the suggestions under consideration are scheduling the annual championships on a weekend other than Labor Day and cordoning off a smaller area near the pier during the competition to facilitate crowd control.

The melee did leave some visible marks on the 1 1/2-mile strip of city beach surrounding the Huntington Beach pier. The Labor Day crowd, normally the season’s biggest, never grew beyond about 28,000. While other recent Labor Day holidays have drawn up to 40,000 beachgoers, life guard officials called Monday’s group “a regular weekend crowd.”

Marine Safety Captain Richardson said that lifeguards spent until 10 p.m. Sunday clearing the beach and lifeguard station of shattered glass and burnt vehicles. The battered station was guarded through the night in case rioters returned, he said.

By Monday morning, the shattered plate glass windows of the Vincent G. Moorehouse Lifeguard Headquarters had been covered with plywood. Gaps in an aluminum fence railing--which had been torn apart and thrown through the headquarters windows--were filled with sawhorses. A white government pickup truck, its windshield a web of cracks, was parked in the garage that earlier had been filled with rioting youths.

The previous day’s riot seemed to be on the mind of nearly every sun-worshipper who lay oiled in the sand at Huntington Beach.

“I’m surprised you guys don’t have anyone searching cars today,” one driver said to parking lot attendant Mike DiGiovanni.

Edna Rae Montierth, 48, Phoenix, brought her family to Huntington Beach from Arizona for the Labor Day weekend to show her grandchildren the ocean for the first time.

“We felt safe yesterday,” Montierth said as she sat on her beachtowel watching the waves. “There were just a few moments of concern when we saw smoke billowing and heard there was a riot. But for the little kids seeing the beach for the first time it was disappointing. Still, it’s understandable; anything can happen in California.”

“Yesterday was totally without reason,” said Huntington Beach Police Lt. Jack Reinholtz. “I don’t know why other peoples’ sand doesn’t attract trouble. But there’s some attraction to our city and we get it.”

Times staff writers Mark I. Pinsky and Gerald Scott contributed to this story.