3 rescued from Long Beach waters; one hospitalized

Three people had to be rescued from the waters off Long Beach on Friday, a day after a city official reversed a decision to order swimmers out of the surf following the drowning of a 12-year-old girl this week.

A 21-year-old man from Queens, the last of the trio to be pulled from the water shortly before 2 p.m., swallowed a large amount of water and was hospitalized. He was later breathing without assistance and expected to recover, city officials said. Two others did not require medical attention.

The near-drowning came the day after Long Beach officials said conditions did not warrant a police-enforced swimming stoppage. City lifeguards do not start guarding the beach on weekdays until Monday.

On Wednesday, Long Beach City Manager Charles Theofan said police would begin ticketing people who refused to leave the water until the summer lifeguard season began today. The next day, he reversed the decision under "a barrage of complaints" and the approval of the city's chief of lifeguards, he said.

Theofan said he and the city's chief lifeguard would continue to take a "day-to-day, hour-by-hour" assessment of water conditions. He defended his decision to allow swimming Friday.

"When you have the legitimacy of only keeping people out of the water when there is a good reason, people will respect that," he said. Swimming will be allowed when lifeguards are on or off duty as conditions allow, he said.

Long Beach City Council member Len Torres said the city has to either install lifeguards earlier in the warm season or have police step up patrols to keep weaker swimmers out of the water.

"I believe that common sense is saying we need to have lifeguards on duty," Torres said. "As a former teacher, I'd have to say we have to have the supervision or we have the police doing a better job getting people out of the water. It's a ridiculous thing to [not enforce the no-swimming code] and not be more careful."

Council member John McLaughlin said lifeguards should be in place earlier. "We should open at least a week earlier if not two weeks earlier if we can get the manpower," he said.

On Tuesday, Nicole Suriel, 12, who attended Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering in Morningside Heights, was pulled unconscious from the water about an hour and a half after she went under while swimming with classmates on a field trip.

The National Weather Service on Friday issued a moderate-risk rip current warning for the area. Theofan said there was no rip current, and water conditions did not play a role in the Friday incident.

Long Beach lifeguards putting in stakes were alerted by a man who spotted the struggling swimmers, Theofan said. Two lifeguards helped rescue the 21-year-old and one of his female companions. With Zachary Dowdy