REGIONAL REPORT : Lifeguards See Season of Danger : Beaches: Rip currents, fewer guards will mean increased risks. Already, rescues are surpassing last year’s rate in some O.C. areas.

With the number of rescues already running far ahead of normal, Southern California lifeguards say they are bracing for what may be a dangerous season of crowded beaches, perilous rip currents and fewer guards surviving the budget ax.

Warmer than usual temperatures, including an Orange County forecast this weekend for highs in the low 90s, have prompted thousands of residents to head to the coast earlier in the year than they might normally, and lifeguards say they’ve seen bigger crowds from Ventura to San Diego.

“Without question, we are in the midst of potentially the biggest spring and summer in terms of (attendance) and aquatic rescue activity that we have seen in many years,” said Stephen Long, president of the 400-member California State Lifeguard Assn.

Long said his lifeguards performed an average of 10 to 12 rescues a day at San Clemente State Beach. Rescues were slightly over 100 through mid-April, he said, “and we had not hit 100 last year until the end of June.”

David Pryor, lifeguard supervisor for Bolsa Chica, Huntington and Crystal Cove state beaches, said there have been 227 surf rescues through April at those parks. Last year, with gloomy weather and colder water, rescues were “way down.” He said for the entire month of March, 1991, they only reported two rescues.

Judging from the pace of rescues so far in 1992, county lifeguard Capt. Robert Buchanan predicted that more than 12,000 swimmers would need help out of the water before year’s end.

“We’re well on our way past last year’s figures,” said Buchanan, citing about 1,500 rescues on county beaches from Jan. 1 to April 19. During the same period in 1991, 1,297 swimmers were pulled from the water. Most of the activity is occurring in the South Bay, he said, especially at Manhattan and Hermosa beaches.

Buchanan said he expects a surge in beach attendance--up to 78 million--this year because ocean waters will be warmed by the El Nino effect, a weather phenomenon near the Equator in the Pacific that raises ocean and atmospheric temperature.

Many swimmers flocking to the beach are apparently unaware that this, too, is the season for hazardous rip currents. Known also as riptides, these currents can entrap inexperienced swimmers in a fierce pull and tug them along, causing panic and the risk of drowning.

“Spring is notoriously famous for shifting swells and having rip currents,” said Curtis Lee Price, a lifeguard at Ventura State Beach. “This is April and usually people go in the water here for a couple of minutes. But (this spring) there’s people swimming out there.”

An informal survey of guard stations throughout Southern California shows that water rescues peaked in the recent Easter break, during which thousands of school and college age youths spent their holidays relaxing in the sand and surf.

During the break, Santa Cruz lifeguards made 120 rescues in warm, 65-degree water, raising their total from Jan. 1 to April 20 to more than 200. Their total for the entire year of 1991 was slightly more than 200, said Long.

In the San Diego region, where winter storms pounded west-facing beaches, the violent surf created underwater valleys and troughs in the sand that have fueled dangerous rip currents.

“The bottom of our ocean is torn up,” said Del Mar lifeguard Lt. John Schooler. “We had a lot of inshore holes and that is encouraging the rip currents.”

Schooler and other lifeguards said gentle waves and seemingly smooth ocean surfaces are deceiving, when actually they can be “very rough conditions for swimming.”

On Wednesday in Orange County for example, an 18-year-old Anaheim man drifted out to sea from Newport Beach. Lifeguards cited strong undercurrents that separated him from friends who were unable to save him.

Lifeguards note that as the weather heats up and summer arrives, they will find themselves caught in a budgetary undertow. Proposed reductions, especially for the state beaches, could mean fewer lifeguards, lifeguard hours and services.

Long, one of three supervising lifeguards in Southern California, said the state will be hit with a 30% reduction in lifeguard services “as early as July 1,” the start of the new fiscal year.

At San Clemente State Beach, for example, Long had to help identify some of the cuts that will contribute the lifeguards’ fair share to the statewide $9 million in “efficiency” reductions. Instead of six permanent lifeguards on duty, his staff will be cut to three lifeguards. And his part-time budget will be slashed to 28%.

“It means I’ll have three bodies to cover, seven days a week,” he said.

Farther north, at Huntington and Bolsa Chica state beaches, lifeguards have proposed closing half their beaches to the public during some weekdays in order to reduce spending as early as next month, said Pryor, the supervising lifeguard there.

“We hope the governor may come up with $10 million in discretionary funds which can help,” Long said. “But we’ve had a hiring freeze, and we’re looking at a potentially very hazardous situation.”

Rip currents are by definition tides opposing other tides, producing violently disturbed water. The currents get their force or power from winds or other sea turbulence and an undermined or eroded sea bottom along a scalloped coast line.

For swimmers, identifying rip currents is almost as important as what to do once they find themselves swimming in one, water safety experts say.

Rip currents are frightening and swimmers run into trouble by fighting them, Schooler said. Usually only the strongest swimmers can escape them by moving parallel to the shore. But lifeguards warn that swimmers who find themselves in a current that is taking them seaward should stay calm, ride it out and then swim back back to shore.

“We’re talking to people on the beach and telling them of the danger” of rip currents, Schooler said. “The danger is to panic. As a lifeguard, it’s pretty obvious who’s in trouble. They’re the one’s going by fast, with their eyes wide open in terror.”

Because of El Nino, ocean temperatures this year have been higher by several degrees, which potentially means two things: the possibility of choppy waves from summer storms and warmer, more inviting surf, said Tim Barnett, an oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.

Barnett said that an El Nino will encourage tropical storms off the coast of Mexico to travel farther north off Baja California.

At Scripps Pier in La Jolla, the Pacific was averaging two to three Fahrenheit degrees warmer than last year, Barnett said, and lifeguards up and down the coast predicted that by late July, ocean temperatures could be in the high 70s.

“It’s unnerving,” Long said.

HOT WEEKEND AHEAD: Smog, temperatures in the low 90s are forecast. B6