Two non-fatal drownings in the last month spurred Coronado Lifeguard Captain Sean Carey’s urgency for water safety and awareness.
In one instance, a little boy, around 4 or 5 years old, stood on the shore of Glorietta Bay, playing in the waist-deep water. His mom was turned around a few yards away.
All of a sudden, a boat flew past on the bay – where the speed limit is 5 miles per hour – and its wake knocked the boy over, shrouding him in water for several seconds.
His mom rushed to pull him ashore while calling for help.
Carey said the Coronado lifeguards don’t normally watch over Glorietta Bay after Labor Day weekend, but that day on Sept. 10, they were doing a drowning drill to practice their dive team response.
The training had just finished up and they were loading up their equipment back in the trucks when the mother ran up to them with the boy and the lifeguards assisted with medical aid, calling paramedics to transport him to the hospital for evaluation.
The boy made a full recovery, according to a report obtained from the Coronado Fire Department.
A few days later, a 911 call came in for another non-fatal drowning.
Another boy, this time around elementary school age, went under the water at Glorietta Bay when no lifeguards were present, and was pulled out by a family member before calling 911 and being transported to the hospital for evaluation, according to the fire department.
“Those two incidents, back-to-back like that – it’s somewhat unprecedented,” Carey said.
I think what we’re seeing is an emerging trend in the bayside growth, in the recreational boating space. And so we’re just trying to adjust to the growth and the changing times.
Coronado Lifeguard Captain Sean Carey
“I think what we’re seeing is an emerging trend in the bayside growth, in the recreational boating space,” Carey said. “And so we’re just trying to adjust to the growth and the changing times.”
The lifeguard captain said that they have been starting to get more accurate numbers of the amount of visitors who are coming to the beaches due to a new AI tool that tracks cell phone locations.
He reassures there is no personal information being taken, but just raw numbers.
According to Carey, there is also a lot of unsafe and illegal activity – like people driving boats above the speed limit – at the bayside.
The captain explained that lifeguards are doing the best they can to staff the bay within city limits, but that it falls under the Port of San Diego’s jurisdiction.
“We mainly have lifeguards there because (Coronado) built this boathouse facility,” Carey said. “Because they’re offering water-centric recreational activities, aquatic recreational activities, then we want to provide safety for those people.”
So he placed lifeguards there for the busy, summer months, but there is not always enough staffing to watch this location.
“We don’t want to strip away resources from the beach … to a point where it’s going to create a safety issue on the beachfront here,” Carey said.
The other piece of this is, there is some illegal boat activity in Glorietta Bay … We have a lot of visitors here, we occasionally have illegal charters.
Coronado Lifeguard Captain Sean Carey
“The other piece of this is, there is some illegal boat activity in Glorietta Bay,” the lifeguard captain explained. “We have a lot of visitors here, we occasionally have illegal charters.”
The biggest hazard Carey sees is people violating the no wake zone, as happened in one instance.
Boating activity in the bay is regulated by layers of federal law, state law, municipal codes and Port of San Diego codes.
“We see all kinds of laws being broken, whether it’s speed or reckless and negligent operation, or illegal charters,” the captain said. Among the common violations: underage drivers and drivers without lifevests on.
Carey said he urges beach users to follow 10 safety tips from the United States Lifesaving Association, starting with the advice to swim near a lifeguard. Even if someone is a good swimmer and understands water safety, he noted, they can have a medical emergency in the water and if there are no lifeguards around, then it’s an even worse situation.
Usually, there are three full-time lifeguards on shift daily monitoring Coronado Beach, and more than a dozen part-time lifeguards throughout the day. Depending on the situation, one or two lifeguards would be deployed to Glorietta Bay if anything were to happen.
Coronado currently has eight full-time ocean lifeguards and around 60 seasonal lifeguards.
