Laguna Beach saw more than 2,000 water rescues over Fourth of July weekend

Along the boardwalk and long stretches of the sand in front of it, the crowds at Main Beach painted a picture of what was taking place across Laguna Beach during the Fourth of July weekend.

It did not go unnoticed by the residents of the town of approximately 23,000 people, some bringing concerns about the traffic, trash and other impacts attributed to visitors to the City Council on Tuesday night.

Umbrellas and canopies were perched in the sand in the afternoon of Independence Day, and not a volleyball net went unoccupied leading up to nightfall. Following the completion of the city’s drone show, which replaced the traditional fireworks spectacular, it took more than two hours for traffic to clear town.

Marine safety personnel stayed busy throughout the four-day weekend, as lifeguards executed 2,278 rescues during the period. There were also 486 medical aids, 11,140 ordinance enforcements and 41,134 preventive contacts.

The Laguna Beach Marine Safety Department executed more than 2,000 rescues in the high surf during the four-day holiday weekend.

(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

The city brought the beaches in South Laguna under local control from the county of Orange ahead of last summer. Monitoring Laguna Beach’s 7.5 miles of coastline, marine safety officials reported 460 rescues between July 1 and July 4 in 2023.

“The crowds have definitely increased,” Marine Safety Capt. Kai Bond said. “It seems like it’s been even a lot more since last year. It’s driven by a lot of factors, but I think one of the primary ones is exposure through social media. … From my perspective, the social media has been a big factor because it’s just an avenue for everybody that has a camera or a cellphone to post pictures of our beautiful coastline and geotag it, and it draws visitors to those locations.”

The Laguna Beach coastline presents opportunities for a variety of rescues, which Bond said occur when a person is physically assisted from the water. Individuals can be rescued from rip currents, in the surfline, for scuba divers and also from boats.

A Laguna Beach lifeguard assists a man to his feet after he became disoriented in the surf at Oak Street Beach.

(Don Leach / Staff Photographer)

Bond said his department is at peak staffing, and it has been able to manage the demand of the last two summers so far due to its recruitment and training efforts.

Laguna Beach added a water rescue vessel to its marine safety fleet in May with the addition of “Wave Watch.” The vessel has been called into service four days per week.

“It’s patrolling similar to our land-based vehicles,” Bond said of the rescue vessel. “It’s patrolling, it’s making those prevents, it’s making those contacts. Even marine protection violations, it gives us that platform to contact vessels offshore. It’s an amazing tool.”