Towering Surf Batters Coastline

Roiling high tides and waves taller than the average one-story house pounded Southern California beaches Monday night and all day Tuesday, creating havoc up and down the coastline.

Newport Beach lifeguards scrambled to rescue nearly 400 beachgoers caught in treacherous rip currents or left breathless by the relentless surf--the most rescues there this summer.

Lifeguard towers had to be moved farther from the water’s edge. Seal Beach lifeguards hurriedly built a sand barrier to ward off possible flooding from a 7-foot tide Tuesday night. In Malibu, homes were damaged and a deck destroyed by pounding water Monday evening.

Malibu Road resident David Lawson, whose home sits above Puerco Beach on legs fashioned from telephone poles, said Monday evening’s high tide was spectacular.

“The place shook all night from the waves,” said Lawson, a contractor. “We stayed up and watched.”

Lawson wasn’t alone. Waves engulfed the bottoms of low-lying beachfront homes and spilled onto the 21600 block of Pacific Coast Highway, leaving a layer of sand and debris on the roadway.

The National Weather Service issued a statement advising beachgoers of the dangerous conditions. The high surf and tide, which should start to ebb today, are fueled by the remnants of a storm that churned up waters between South America and New Zealand last week, National Weather Service forecaster Greg Martin said.

These could be the largest waves of the summer, lifeguards said.

“I haven’t seen anything like this in a few years,” said Newport lifeguard Don Gray, who spent the day on a rescue boat. Gray said that when his boat hunkered down behind one of the big breakers, the water loomed so tall that it obliterated his view of the entire beach, from the sand to the top of the telephone poles. “You can’t see anything but sky,” he said.

Normal waves are 3 to 4 feet tall, but Tuesday’s waves reached as high as 15 feet, lifeguards said.

Laguna Beach, San Clemente State Beach and Huntington Beach lifeguards were also kept busy. Los Angeles County lifeguards at Zuma Beach made so many rescues that they stopped counting in the early afternoon.

Michelle Bui, an Anaheim 11-year-old, was rescued by Gray and fellow lifeguard Josh VanEgmond from waters off Newport.

“I was afraid I was going to drown,” said Michelle, who was at the beach with a group of friends. “I was trying to get back on the sand, but the water kept pushing me back.”

Being caught among the towering waves is scary, the girls said.

“Every time you get air, the water pushes you back underneath,” said her friend Maile Triu of Yorba Linda, who also was rescued. “You can’t really get a full breath.”

Some of the rip currents were moving as fast as 8 mph, Newport lifeguard Brian O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke said swimmers aren’t strong enough to fight such currents, and those without extensive experience in the ocean don’t know how to catch their breath. Only expert surfers can cope with such waters, he said, and sometimes even they can’t avoid being swept onto rocks or pulled far out to sea.

But the thrill that comes from riding the big waves draws even more surfers out to the ocean than usual, lifeguards acknowledged.

Experts advise that those caught in rip currents swim parallel to the shore until they’ve escaped the outward flow. Swimming against the water is exhausting and futile, said Newport Beach lifeguard captain Jim Turner.

“Don’t fight the current,” said Turner. “It’s better to let the current float you out to sea and call for help,” he said.

A rip current, marked by churning brown water, occurs when a body of water is trapped near the beach by successive waves. That water struggles against incoming waves to get back out into the ocean, creating a “river of water,” Turner said.

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Times staff writers Bob Pool and Catherine Blake contributed to this report.