5 Are Nearly Drowned in Rip Current

Five people were rescued from heavy surf off a jetty in Newport Beach on Wednesday, and four of them were hospitalized in serious condition after nearly drowning, an official said.

The incident happened about 7 p.m. near the end of the 56th Street jetty, where 5-to-6-foot swells had created a strong rip current, said John Blauer, a spokesman for the Newport Beach Fire Dept.

At least two of the people “were within moments of going underwater and not being seen again. If the lifeguard hadn’t been there, they would have been dead,” he said.

Lifeguard Arn Van Dyke was making his final rounds in a jeep on the beach when he spotted a swimmer in a white T-shirt clinging to the end of the jetty, Blauer said. While swimming out to make a rescue, Van Dyke found two more people about to go under. He called a second lifeguard for backup, and they discovered another two people clinging to the end of the jetty.

Apparently the five--three men and two women--were friends, all in their late teens or early 20s, who had been swimming when they were caught in the rip current and swept out to the end of the jetty.

Their identities and further details were not available late Wednesday.

A rip current at the same jetty this month swept a swimmer out to sea. His body was recovered a week later in Huntington Beach. Blauer said there also was a drowning off the same jetty last spring.