July 4 Biggest Day at O.C. Beaches : Half a Million Expected to Seek Place in the Sun

If you plan to hit the beach for today’s Fourth of July holiday, you’ll have plenty of company: Half a million people are expected to descend on Orange County shores on this, the most crowded beach day of the year.

Better get there when the roosters start crowing.

Take Newport Beach, for instance, a city of 70,000 considered the jewel of the Orange County coastline.

You will find 100,000 bodies crowding onto six miles of beachfront. Roads to the oceanfront at the western edge of Newport Beach won’t even be open after 4 p.m. And in that same 45-block neighborhood, an onslaught of tourists the size of half the city’s population is expected to squeeze into rental apartments to party like mad.

Fireworks aren’t even legal in Newport Beach, which nevertheless attracts so many sun-loving patriots that riots have erupted there in years past. Consequently, the entire Police Department, plus officers of two other agencies, will be working on this, our country’s birthday. The overtime alone is projected to cost $70,000, and city officials don’t even want to talk beach cleanup prices.

“We have our own war zone here,” Newport Beach Councilwoman Evelyn R. Hart said.

As traditional as picnics and sparklers, the annual Independence Day exodus to the ocean is one sans fireworks: even the so-called “safe and sane” variety is outlawed at every beach in Orange County.

But if you still are bent on celebrating the Fourth at the shore, what’s the word on how best to get a parking spot? A fire-ring? A towel’s width on the sand?

Two words, lifeguards said: Come early.

“I would say our lots will be full probably by 10 a.m.,” Huntington Beach Marine Safety Lt. Steve Davidson said. “By then, people will need to bicycle or park inland a ways and walk.”

Added Doug D’Arnall, the city’s beach services manager: “The Fourth of July is always our biggest crowd day of the year. Even if the weather is lousy, we have good crowds. But the weather we’re having now is the best Fourth of July weather we’ve had in years.”

The forecast calls for a windless, sunny day in the mid-70s, small surf, and water temperature in the high 60s--all of them ingredients for a perfect Fourth of July at the beach. Marine safety officers, however, offered the following tips:

*Check with lifeguards upon arriving at the beach for any riptides or dangerous surf conditions.

*Don’t swim alone.

*Don’t take running dives into the waves.

*Stay away from the water if you have been drinking.

Another warning to bear in mind if the beach is your destination: Traffic will be awful, and in Newport Beach it will be worse still.

The area bordered by West Coast Highway, West Balboa Boulevard, Prospect Street, 32nd Street and the beach will be closed by police to inbound motorists--including residents--between 4 p.m. today and 3 a.m. Wednesday. This area includes Seashore Drive and the eastbound lanes of West Balboa Boulevard, but the westbound lanes--those exiting the Balboa Peninsula--will remain open.

Even if you live in that neighborhood, you can return only on foot until the barricade is removed.

But Newport Beach Police Lt. Tim Newman, who is running the department’s special command post throughout the holiday, said most residents are aware of the road closures.

“We’ve done this for at least three years, so the locals are used to it,” Newman said Monday afternoon, shortly after the command post was set up behind Newport Beach City Hall. Since midnight Saturday, 120 people had been arrested--mostly on alcohol-related charges, he said.

In Huntington Beach, the county’s longest-running Independence Day parade is expected to further tangle traffic in the downtown coastal area. Lifeguards say the 10 a.m. parade is yet another reason to arrive when beach lots open at 7 a.m. today.

There are eight miles of shoreline within Huntington Beach’s city limits, but “the majority of our parking is from the pier to Beach Boulevard--there’s about 2,200 spaces there,” said Marine Safety Lt. Davidson.

Fire Rings Hard to Get

The city beach’s coveted fire rings--at a premium on the Fourth of July--are located in a three-quarter-mile stretch between Lake Street and Beach Boulevard. D’Arnall said the city has about 200 such fire pits.

Whatever you do, don’t go looking for barbecue pits at Aliso Beach in South Laguna.

Asked how many fire rings are available at the quarter-mile shoreline park, Lifeguard Steve Mosher said, looking outside, “Not a lot--let’s see.

“One, uh, one. We have one fire ring.” He laughed. “That’s all. there were two fire rings a couple days ago, but (the other one is) not here anymore. I guess a storm washed it away.”

Also washed away was most of a 900,000-gallon raw sewage spill that forced closure of much of the shore until Friday. The banks of Aliso Creek, which spills into the ocean north of Aliso Pier, and a 1,000-foot stretch of waterfront on each side of the pier will remain closed today because of remaining traces of untreated effluent.

That may explain why only a few hundred people showed up Monday, Mosher said.

If you can forgo fire rings, it just might be the best spot along Orange County’s shoreline today.

GUIDE TO FUN ON 4TH: Fireworks and other activities. Part II, Page 2.