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Newport Beach lifeguards mark 100 years watching over the beach

April 3, 2023

Newport Beach Chief Lifeguard Brian O’Rourke analyzed a dramatic photograph of 13 swimmers struggling in the ocean, swept out to sea in a massive rip current.

“They are getting pulled off their feet, watching the shore slip away… they are getting tired and exhausted,” O’Rourke said. “Fear and panic is setting in and the drowning process is starting to begin. These people are going to drown pretty quickly.”

While the photo was taken decades ago, it’s a scene that has played out time and time again — and if it weren’t for lifeguards in situations such as this, countless lives would be lost to the unpredictable, unforgiving sea each year as people flock to the coast.

Newport Beach lifeguards are marking 100 years of service along the city’s shoreline and it has been a chance to reflect on the department formed in 1923 and to celebrate successes and pivotal moments in its long history.

Before 1923, there was no lifeguarding service in the city, but as more people started showing up to the shore and tragedies occurred as beachgoers tested the waters, unaware of the ocean’s dangers, its need became obvious.

“People would go out in these waters, these massive rip currents and they would die out here,” O’Rourke said during a presentation recently to city officials. “And there was a community on the beach who said, ‘We need to provide a service to protect these beaches.’

“They went into a preventive-action mode,” he said. “They went out and stopped these tragic events from happening.”

Newport Beach lifeguards spot a surfer in trouble and heading close to the jetty at the Wedge in 2014. (File photo: KEN STEINHARD SCNG/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER)

Newport Beach lifeguards in their rescue boat, a tool used to help people in trouble out in the water. (File photo CHRISTINE COTTER, SCNG/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER)

The statue of former Newport Beach lifeguard Ben Carlson stands surrounded by palm trees at the base of the Newport Beach Pier in Newport Beach on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. The Newport Beach lifeguards celebrate their 100-year of lifeguarding history this year. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A lifeguard keeps an eye on beach-goers near the Balboa Pier in Newport Beach in 2020. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Ben Carlson, a longtime Newport Beach lifeguard, died in the line of duty in 2014. His legacy lives on through beach safety efforts, scholarships, education programs and more. (Photo courtesy of the Ben Carlson Memorial and Scholarship Foundation)

A Newport Beach lifeguard runs back on shore after making a welfare check with a swimmer in the high waves near Balboa Pier in Newport Beach in 2021. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Lifeguards attend to two people in the water at the Wedge in Newport Beach in 2018, one of the most treacherous areas in Southern California. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Seasonal lifeguard Carly Christian stands atop tower 18 in Newport Beach in 2019. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The Newport Beach Lifeguard Headquarters sits on the beach at the Newport Beach Pier in Newport Beach on Wednesday, March 29, 2023. The Newport Beach lifeguards celebrate their 100-year of lifeguarding history this year. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A lifeguard stands at the water’s edge as a crowd lines the beach to watch bodyboarders and surfers ride the large waves at the Wedge in Newport Beach in 2022. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Newport Beach Junior Lifeguards walk along the sand in 2020. The junior lifeguards will get a new $5 million building being built near the Balboa Pier. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Early-era images show lifeguards in Newport Beach from decades ago, shown during a city meeting marking the 100-year anniversary of the Marine Safety department. (Photo courtesy of the city of Newport Beach)

A Newport Beach lifeguard keeps an eye on the few body surfers in the water at the Wedge in Newport Beach on in 2021. (Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Newport Beach junior lifeguards run down the beach to take part in a buoy swim on Ben Carlson Day at the Junior Lifeguard Headquarters in Newport Beach in 2018.(Photo by Mark Rightmire, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A Coast Guard helicopter flies over a memorial paddle out for Newport Beach lifeguard Ben Carlson off the Newport Pier in 2014. (File photo MICHAEL GOULDING, SCNG/ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER)

A lifeguard watches the water off Newport Beach. (File photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Shark-bite victim Maria Korcsmaros greets lifeguard Andy Matsuyama as Newport Beach paramedic Andy Janis and lifeguard Mike Ur look on. Matsuyama and Ur were the first two lifeguards to reach her and pull her out of the water after the attack. (Photo by Ana Venegas, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Following a decade of planning and approvals — and facing increased costs — the $7.8 million Newport Beach Junior Lifeguard building is slotted to start construction in September with hopes to be open by summer 2023. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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Retired lifeguard Mike Brousard, who wrote “Warm Winds and Following Seas: Reflections of a Lifeguard in Paradise,” recounted a pivotal moment in Newport Beach’s lifeguarding history when, in 1925, a fishing boat overturned in massive surf.

Hawaiian Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, a regular surfer at Corona del Mar before the rock jetty destroyed the wave, along with Newport Beach’s first lifeguard Antar Deraga and fellow lifeguards Thomas Sheffield and Charles Plummer and a few others rushed to help.

Kahanamoku grabbed his surfboard and saved seven people. Other lifeguards retrieved their boards and saved another five. Their use of surfboards and paddleboards helped spawn the idea of using rescue boards, still done to this day.

“After that, Newport got a lot more serious about having lifeguards on their beaches,” Brousard said.

Much of O’Rourke’s early-day research for his city presentation came from the book “The Tide Has Changed,” written in 1968 by a woman whose daughter nearly drowned in front of her in West Newport, saved by lifeguards.

“The knowledge and skills of these early guards has been passed on through every generation of lifeguards and through the ranks, all the way into modern-times here,” O’Rourke said. “After 1923, lifeguard services started to get creative in how they were protecting the beaches.”

The first female lifeguard was hired in 1929, but not much is known about her, other than her first name Hilda, O’Rourke said, and that “she was a really great swimmer and people really liked her.”

As visitors started flocking to Newport Beach in the ’40s and ’50s, the lifeguard department expanded, more towers were built and patrol vehicles with two-way radios were added.

In 1958, the first rescue boat was put into service.

“This was a game changer for lifeguards,” O’Rourke said, noting that the population was “exploding” on the beaches. “People came from all over the place. The first rescue boat in the first decade saved thousands of people.”

The first lifeguard headquarters built in 1965 cost a “whopping” $7,000 and included a dispatch and observation area to watch over the beach.

While the lifeguard program started as part of the Fire Department, it branched out to be its own emergency services department in 1958. It rejoined the Fire Department in 1995.

Jim Turner, a longtime Newport Beach lifeguard chief who started his career in 1973 and retired from the department in 2014, said merging back with the Fire Department to become a cohesive part of the city’s emergency response was a key moment.

Lifeguards today are called on for swift-water rescues and train along the Fire Department for other scenarios that may need ocean or water skills.

While many beaches are simply stretches of sand, Newport Beach’s coastline is unique, Brousard said. One of the most dangerous areas is known as the Wedge, a wave that can get up to 30-feet tall on a summer south swell.

A group of Newport Beach lifeguards in the early 1940s. (COURTESY CITY OF NEWPORT BEACH)

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“That is the most unusual wave maybe on the West Coast, the angle of the jetty refracts this thing into a monster,” Brousard said.

Also challenging? The rock groin jetties in West Newport that stick out like fingers in the sea.

“The swells push in there and hit the jetty, it’s a man-made rip current against the south side of the jetty,” he said. “They get some really gnarly rescue stuff going on there near the jetty.”

It’s one of the toughest places on the coast to lifeguard, he said. “You have to know what you’re doing there.”

Even the strongest, most trained swimmers have fallen victim to the sea.

Among them was Ben Carlson. In 2014, Newport Beach suffered its first death in the line of duty when Carlson died while doing a rescue in massive surf. The surf and current were so strong, his body was found half a mile away from where he went missing, O’Rourke said. The swimmer he went after survived.

A statue was erected in his honor.

“Ben forever watching over the water” at McFadden Square, O’Rourke described it. “This wasn’t just an incident that shocked our lifeguards, our department, but also this community.”

Following his death, Carlson’s family, friends and fellow lifeguards created the The Ben Carlson Memorial & Scholarship Foundation to continue his legacy of water safety, as well as give scholarships to budding lifeguards. The lifeguard headquarters were renamed the Benjamin M. Carlson Lifeguard Headquarters in 2015.

Carlson was also a key member of the junior lifeguard staff; the program was started in 1984 by Reenie Boyer, who was recruited from Huntington Beach to start Newport Beach’s version of the youth training.

The summer program has swelled through the years, with an estimated 1,500 children and 60 staff members participating.

“We’re not just doing preventative action, we’re educating the youth on how to come to the beaches … enjoy it safely,” O’Rourke said.

Another key moment in Newport Beach’s history not mentioned in O’Rourke’s presentation came in 2016, when Newport Beach lifeguards were the first in the county to respond to a major shark attack after swimmer Maria Korcsmaros was bitten off Corona del Mar by a great white shark.

Lifeguards Andy Matsuyama and Mike Ure happened to be doing boat training near Korcsmaros, who started waving her arm frantically in the air, blood turning the water red.

The attack – and the lifeguards’ swift response – helped agencies around the state and the country train for shark-encounter scenarios.

Turner, who took a job as chief lifeguard at Lake Mission Viejo following his retirement from Newport Beach, noted a few more milestones through the years: the transition from using a steel “can” buoy to molded plastic and high-density foam buoys to allow for multiple victim rescues by a single lifeguard; adding rescue boats that can pick up a dozen victims at a time; and the use of rescue watercraft that can go into the surf zones to help victims.

Technological advancements in forecasting surf has helped both staff the beaches in anticipation of dangerous conditions and alert the public to dangers, Turner added.

But while technology and tools may have changed, the goal has remained the same and always will: To save lives.

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These days, Newport Beach lifeguards protect an estimated 10 million visitors along the city’s 6.2 miles of ocean and 2.5 miles of bay beaches.

“It’s been a huge battle to gain credibility over the years,” Brousard said, noting that not long ago lifeguards had a stereotype of simply hanging out on the beach all day. “There’s a lot of days when it’s quiet. But when the surf is big and the crowd is big and the rips are going – you’re on the edge of exhaustion, going, ‘Do I have another rescue in me?’ It’s a unique, misunderstood profession.”

A centennial celebration is in the works for this summer at the new $5 million junior lifeguard building under construction near Balboa Pier.

Orange County Register

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Newport Beach lifeguards mark 100 years watching over the beach

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