Havasu Girds for the ‘Crazy Californians’

Richard Beaudry has hauled 43 dead people out of the calm, warm waters of Lake Havasu in his 19 years as an Arizona Game and Fish Department warden here.

Some of those people drowned in swimming or diving accidents. About 80% of them, however, died in boating incidents mostly attributed to excessive speed, intoxication or inexperience.

Nearly all were from California.

“If I don’t have a dead body this July 4 weekend I’ll consider it a success,” said Beaudry. “I just wish they would leave their money, not blood.”

The Independence Day weekend comes a week after a judge in nearby Kingman sought to send a message to “all the crazy Californians” by sentencing an Orange County man to 18 months in prison for endangerment in connection with a fatal boating accident on the lake.

Drunk Pilot

Testimony showed that Carl C. Hacker, 29, of Anaheim, was intoxicated when he drove one of two boats that collided during the 1986 Memorial Day weekend, killing two women and injuring six others--all from California. A second man, Charles Salisbury, 49, of Riverside, has been charged with manslaughter in the incident and faces trial Sept. 22.

“The locals stay as far away from the lakes (of the Colorado River) as possible because all the crazy Californians come over here and make the place a total disaster area,” said Judge Steven Conn in passing sentence on Hacker.

“It is generally accepted among people who live here, own boats and use the lakes . . . that if you go to the lakes on one of the three summer (holiday) weekends you should have your head examined,” Conn said in a later interview. “Most people just give the lakes a wide berth on holiday weekends.”

Many residents in this resort community of 20,000 on the Arizona side of the lake that also borders San Bernardino County, agree.

On the big weekends of summer--Memorial Day, July 4 and Labor Day--Californians of all ages arrive here by the thousands with sleek, fast boats and money for fuel, food and booze.

Money Welcomed

While business owners welcome the dollars these tourists spend in local bars, shops, restaurants, campgrounds and watercraft rental agencies, vastly outnumbered law enforcement officials try in vain to curtail their abuses of safety regulations and common sense on the water.

“I dread the big weekends; I absolutely can’t stand them,” said Angela Belknap, 20, a waitress in a local hotel, “because they come, they drink, they destroy everything. It’s not their town.”

Not everyone agrees, however.

“I own two clothing stores and I’ve never had any problems,” said John Parrot, vice president of the Lake Havasu City Chamber of Commerce, who registered a complaint with county officials about Conn’s statements from the bench.

Parrot also said that the number of accidents and injuries reported might be considered low when compared with the number of people who use the lake.

On a holiday weekend, there may be more than 10,000 boats on 35-mile-long Lake Havasu, most clustered near this town perhaps most famous as home of the relocated London Bridge, authorities said.

Patrolling the waters are six boats from the Mohave County Sheriff’s Department, the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the U.S. Coast Guard, Lake Havasu City Police Department and the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Holding Action

“The only thing we do is try and keep the lid on during the peak periods,” said Mohave County Sheriff Joseph Bonzelet. “We aren’t stopping crime, we are spitting in the wind.”

Lake Havasu each year has the highest number of boating-related injuries reported on any stretch of the Colorado River’s 1,000 miles of coastline, said Tom Alexander, boating coordinator for the Arizona Game and Fish Department in Phoenix.

According to the latest statistics available, there were 21 people injured on Lake Havasu in 1985. Lake Powell was second with 12 injuries reported that year. Similarly, there were 31 people injured and three killed on Lake Havasu in 1984, compared with 13 injuries at Lake Powell, Alexander said. There have been no boat-related fatalities reported at Lake Havasu so far this year.

“People are running into each other out there on a lake that is wide open and where weather is not a problem,” Alexander said. “Most of the problems are alcohol-related.”

“Most of the accidents and injuries go unreported,” added Beaudry, “because many people . . . go directly to the hospital.”

Local officials predicted that 40,000 people or more will descend on their community this weekend.

Many residents said they routinely avoid the rowdy crowds by leaving town or docking their own boats and hibernating at home.

Avoiding Visitors

“I’ll go shopping Friday morning and won’t go to the store again until Tuesday,” said Donna Davenport, 37, owner of a local liquor store. “God knows I love their business, I just wish they would behave.”

These residents and others said they feel personally insulted by the not-uncommon sight here of tourists passing bottles of booze and marijuana cigarettes from boat to boat, skiing at night at high speeds in narrow coves, diving naked off the London Bridge into a channel below or leaving mounds of trash and empty bottles at local campgrounds.

“The accidents we see are so stupid it seems like they lose their brains when they get here,” Bonzelet said.

On Memorial Day weekend, for example, four California residents were injured when their speeding boat ran aground at 11 p.m. A sheriff’s patrol boat was “torpedoed” by a Jet Ski driver who let his 4-year-old son take the handlebars. A young woman wearing glasses nearly lost an eye when she was struck in the face with a water balloon, authorities said.

Basic boating safety regulations, such as the requirement that a life jacket be on board for every person in a boat, are routinely ignored. However, there is no speed limit on the lake other than what is deemed “reasonable and prudent,” authorities said.

Mohave County Deputy Sheriff Robert Kuerner had barely left dock in his patrol boat one day this week when he spotted boaters that failed to wave the required flag when a skier is in the water. There were three young men and a woman aboard.

Short of Equipment

“Do you have five life jackets on board?” Kuerner asked the driver, a 23-year-old man from Newport Beach who had borrowed his father’s boat for the week.

“Sure,” said the driver.

“Can I see them, please?” Kuerner asked.

“Uh, we only have one,” said the driver, who was cited for not having enough life jackets on the craft, an infraction carrying a maximum penalty of a $500 fine and 90 days in jail.

“I hate to stereotype, but 95% of our citations on the waterway are given to Californians,” Kuerner said. “On busy weekends we’ll write 75 to 100 tickets ranging from driving under the influence to not having enough life jackets.”

Bonzelet said that a few more men and boats would certainly enhance his ability to enforce laws on the waterway, but budget restraints have made that all but impossible.

Meanwhile, he criticized the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department for not having more than one deputy on duty on the lake.

“These are California people bringing California problems to us but we are not getting a lot of help from the California side,” Bonzelet said.

“It is a shock to me that they would say that,” said Lt. William Meals, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department substation at Needles. “I feel we are doing at least as much--or more--as anybody can.”

This weekend, for example, Meals said, the department will have a patrol boat on the lake at all times with three more available to respond in an emergency.