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<\/p>\nSan Diego lifeguards say rip currents drove most of this summer’s rescues, as a new Hyundai-donated vehicle fleet joins the effort to keep swimmers safe.<\/p>\n
SAN DIEGO \u2014 Calmer waters greeted swimmers at La Jolla Shores this week, but San Diego lifeguards say the relief won’t last long.<\/p>\n
“The swell has dropped a little bit. We have some more swells coming, but when that wave energy gets increased, the rip currents start pulling a little bit more,” said San Diego Fire-Rescue Lifeguard Chief James Gartland.<\/p>\n
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Gartland says it’s been a banner summer for water rescues, and rip currents are behind the vast majority of them.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been extremely busy,” Gartland said, citing hundreds of rescues in a single weekend. About 90% of those rescues involved swimmers caught in a rip current, he said.<\/p>\n
“We spend all day moving people out of rip currents, doing preventive action,” Gartland said.<\/p>\n
Marla Fry, of Blossom Valley, brought her grandchildren to La Jolla Shores this week before school starts next week. She said a warning from another grandmother changed where she set up for the day.<\/p>\n
“When I first got here, there was a grandma, and she told me that her 9-year-old grandson got caught in a rip current. She said, ‘Beware,'” Fry said.<\/p>\n
Fry originally planned to stay on the north end of the beach, near where she saw surfers in the water, but lifeguards recommended she move.<\/p>\n
“Fortunately, the lifeguards told us to come down here, and I feel much better. I’m calmer,” Fry said.<\/p>\n
Gartland says rip currents are notoriously difficult to track, which is why lifeguards recommend swimmers check in with a tower before entering the water.<\/p>\n
“Those rip currents move up and down the beaches. They are very difficult to predict, and they are not constant. They are not always doing the same thing,” Gartland said.<\/p>\n
Lifeguards are also getting help from a new vehicle fleet, courtesy of a five-year, $4 million marketing partnership with Hyundai that comes at no cost to the city. The fleet includes 18 Santa Cruz trucks, 12 Palisade XRT SUVs and two Ioniq 5 electric vehicles.<\/p>\n
“Our equipment and vehicles are our partners,” Gartland said.<\/p>\n
“It’s just a different type of technology that Hyundai has. They’re all-wheel-drive technology that moves torque around to different tires to make sure they operate safely in the sand,” Gartland said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"San Diego lifeguards say rip currents drove most of this summer’s rescues, as a new Hyundai-donated vehicle fleet…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-427095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}