Some posters have a vile contempt for human life. This is hardly Darwin Award material -- could and does happen to a wide range of people.
Yep. I come from a commercial fishing family. The Oregon coast is gnarly, I'm told, and that water is damned cold. Enchante writes: "... and the whole thing about she was gone by the time he took off his jacket — that sounds very hard to believe ...."
Not for me, not if she's tiny, not if she's not used to fairly big waves and certainly not if she was wearing clothes or boots that could weight with water quickly and sink, and not if the water is swelling and surging, especially on a rocky shore. The ocean is a whole 'nother ballgame when it comes to being in the water -- this from a person who played in pretty big waves a lot as a kid and first SCUBA dove at the age of 14.
In my home fishing town, we had a lot of wonderful tourists, great, friendly folks, come to the coast for a weekend of fishing from California's central valley, Bakersfield, Fresno, the oil towns of Taft, the farm towns of Delano and Visalia. They often underestimated the ocean and its deceptive calm. My fisherman brother sadly named an area outside the breakwater "the Bakersfield Triangle" because of the tourists lost there every year. I say "sadly" because neither he nor any of his fellow professional fishermen took any joy from it nor found any real amusement in it. They all knew enough pros who made simple mistakes or miscalls and sometimes lost their boats or their lives.
You said — “Such waves kill unsuspecting beach walkers with some regularity every year. If you haven’t seen a “sneaker wave” you can’t really imagine its danger.”
Yeah, in general, land-bound people just don’t realize the roughness of the seas, especially around Oregon and Washington. It’s not like being down in Galveston where you have six-inch waves... LOL...
I mean, having 20-foot seas that day and the Oregon Coast Guard had to turn back after 15 minutes — that tells you how bad it was.
Those people should have been more careful.... It’s dangerous out there...
I went to the Oregon coast one time and there were warning signs about sneaker waves all over the place. Growing up in Florida, I'd never heard of such a thing.