Long Beach is about two and a half miles of south-facing beach with jetties spaced every 200 yards or so. The waves usually break left (westerly direction, sometimes pretty hard.
When there is a lot of water moving as on Friday the action creates at least one sea pus between each pair of jetties. All that water coming in has to go back out so it creates a 'river' or a 'cut' that pushes out past the break. At Long Beach the break is usually only seventy yards from the beach, often less.
Experienced ocean swimmers know that you can't fight the pus, you either swim sideways until you are out of it or go with the flow until it weakens outside the break.
The two who drowned at Long Beach were muslim-named guys from a non-beach town. I would wager that they seldom if ever swim anywhere, let alone the ocean. That's just the way it is here.
They got knocked down in water that was less than head high, panicked and drowned. It happens at least twice a season at long Beach and more than that at Rockaway which has the same set-up. The victims are always in two categories...older white guys who have heart attacks or inexperienced black/latino/south-asian/mid-eastern young people with no experience. Every year.
Agreed . . . and more often in the second catagory.
Devon Flanders, 22, of Crown Heights, is now feared drowned, his grieving family told the Daily News Saturday."He swam every day," said his stunned mother, Jayne Flanders, adding that her Trinidad-born son regularly visited Coney Island and Jacob Riis Park during the summer. "Everybody in the Caribbean swam. He was a great swimmer."
Firefighters were able to rescue her son's 23-year-old pal, Brandon Brian, about 9:30 p.m., but not Flanders.
"They need to have more lifeguards and train them better," said Jayne Flanders, who was preparing to make funeral arrangements. "It's unfair this happened to my son."
Now it's the lifeguards fault that her son didn't know the local waters?
In Long Beach, L.I., a 29-year-old Wantagh man died after he was spotted struggling about 150 feet from shore about 7 p.m. Saturday, police said. Off-duty lifeguards rushed to the beach and reached the victim within minutes, but he was unconscious and rescuers were unable to revive him, Police Lt. Bruce Meyer said.
Two teenagers were swept away off Long Beach on Friday as they played football in about 5 feet of water, authorities said. One body was recovered Friday and the other was still being sought.
Meyer said he “cannot recall there ever being back-to-back situations like this.”
The rough seas were due to a strong storm system that brought 8-foot waves to the area earlier this week, the National Weather Service said.
“The undertows and riptides have been particularly strong around the beaches for the past few weeks,” Coast Guard Cmdr. Greg Hitchen said.