Jetty

As a resident of Huntington Beach, I must speak out in opposition to the jetty the Navy is proposing for the Naval Weapons Station. We have beaches here, which for years have been wonderful for surfing and for families and picnics. Our whole coast is connected. What the Navy is doing will affect the wetlands at Bolsa Chica, it will make a bay out of Surfside and Sunset beaches and it will affect our surf at Huntington Beach, which is renowned as the world capital for surfing.

The explosive Wedge surf break in Newport Beach has left generations of daredevils with broken bones and concussions. On Friday, with waves topping 20 feet, it killed a man -- a rare death at a place that would seem to invite it. The Orange County coroner's office has identified the man as 50-year-old Monte Kevin Valantin of Lawndale. He was thrown against the rock jetty that produces the Wedge's outsized waves about 12:30 p.m.

Four Orange County men were shot and wounded early Sunday and three others escaped injury when their group was surprised by a gunman while fishing from a jetty, police said. The shooting occurred about 3 a.m. while the seven were winding down from a night at the jetty at the end of 72nd Place and Ocean Boulevard, a popular area for casual late-night fishing, Long Beach Police Lt. Philip King said.

When artist Robert Smithson assembled a massive spiral unfurling into the Great Salt Lake 38 years ago, there was no indication that this remote spot would be altered again by humans any time soon. Smithson's work, called "Spiral Jetty," became a world-renowned piece of art, its striking man-made pattern created amid isolation. Now art lovers fear it is threatened by plans to explore for oil a few miles offshore.

A sheriff's deputy was slightly injured Tuesday while investigating a boating fatality the day before. The unidentified deputy got a 2-inch cut on his nose about 11:25 a.m. when part of the boat fell on him, Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino said. The 30-foot boat had crashed into rocks at the Dana Point jetty Monday. It was still unclear how boater Richard Bilbro, 47, of Laguna Niguel -- later found floating near the jetty -- had died, Amormino said.

The white T-shirt caught lifeguard Arn Van Dyke's eye as he made his last round of the day along the jetties that jut seaward here. "I could see the guy on the rocks and he was getting nailed by the waves," said Van Dyke, 34, an 11-year veteran. By the time Van Dyke reached the man, what he thought was going to be a single rescue became something else. In all, five people had been swept along the 56th Street jetty by a riptide during what officials described as relatively calm conditions.

Re "Friends Salute Surfer Killed in Bali," Oct. 20: Thank you for your coverage of Steve Webster's tragic death in Bali. I wanted people to know that Steve was not only a beloved family man and fellow surfer, but also that he cared a lot about his community, especially kids. One of my most vivid memories of Steve was when he spoke several years ago to the Newport Beach City Council, urging the council to ratify the Parks and Recreation Department's plan to allow board surfing at all times in Newport's "Hottest Hundred Yards" between the 52nd and 56th streets jetties.

Re "Beach-Erosion Funds Float Away," April 29: I read in dismay that the president's proposed budget does not include critically needed funds to protect and preserve Orange County's shoreline. Surfside Colony, which is part of the city of Seal Beach and is the starting point for much of the sand between Seal Beach and Newport Beach, suffers from perilous erosion. At the present, some homes in Surfside have less that 15 feet between them and the pounding surf of the Pacific Ocean.

The Coast Guard's Local Notice to Mariners has warned for several months of the hazard to vessels negotiating the mouth of Oceanside's harbor because of shoaling. In foul weather and during heavy surf conditions, a vessel can become unmanageable when passing through the jetties. Nonetheless, tragedy struck late last month when an experienced Oceanside sailor, Frank Lucksinger, 67, was killed when the boat he was sailing was struck by a large wave.

Seal Beach is extremely sentimental to me and probably to thousands of people who learned to surf there as I did 19 years ago. Back then the jetty smelled like wet sand and it had healthy kelp growing with large greenish leaves. There were pelicans all over the rocks because of the abundance of fish. I used to collect pretty little shells on the sand, and tried to catch all the crabs climbing in the rocks. Well, I went back to surf there and was horrified. In place of my pretty little shells there was trash and debris including jagged tin can lids.

A sheriff's rescue diver was rushed to a hospital with leg injuries Friday after becoming entangled in a sunken sailboat while searching the wreckage for its missing owner. Deputy Ken Kropidlowski, an 18-year veteran of the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a member of its dive team, was 30-feet deep off a jetty in Newport Beach when he got tangled in debris about 11 a.m. and made an emergency ascent, Jim Amormino, a sheriff's spokesman, said.

Powerful winds that remained intense throughout the day Wednesday created havoc around the Southland, causing at least one serious injury and feeding a fire that scaled a 200-foot hillside near Cal State L.A., destroying a business and a home in its path. The winds, which gusted in spots at more than 50 mph, toppled a 50-foot tree in Anaheim onto a parked van, critically hurting a man inside.

Fierce winds swept over Southern California on Wednesday, blowing a 25-foot sailboat into a Newport Beach jetty and toppling a tree onto a van, seriously injuring an Anaheim maintenance man. The 60-mph winds also spread a fire from a tire warehouse onto a hillside adjacent to Cal State Los Angeles, destroyed a home and damaged two others. Additionally, a passenger on Disneyland's Jungle Cruise ride suffered minor injuries when the wind blew over a banana tree.

Authorities recovered the body of a Bay Area man from the ocean off Corona del Mar on Friday near where he and a female companion had been swept off a jetty by heavy surf earlier this week. The body of Sean Shungfei Yeh, 53, of Fremont was discovered about 11 a.m. in the rocky shoreline waters of Inspiration Point at Corona del Mar State Beach, not far from where he and Yi Ni Kwong, 49, of Irvine disappeared while fishing early Tuesday.

After two days of searching, police think they have identified the two people who were swept into the Pacific on Tuesday off a rocky jetty in Corona del Mar. Sean Shungfei Yeh, 53, of Fremont and Yi Ni Kwong, 49, of Irvine are presumed drowned, though no bodies have been found, Newport Beach Police Sgt. Evan Sailor said. Police said they found a 2000 Toyota Camry that was registered to Kwong in a beach parking lot.

The search continued Wednesday for the bodies of a man and woman swept off a jetty in Corona del Mar by a large wave. "We have boats out there looking, but nothing so far," said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. "We're going to keep searching for the next couple of days, and hopefully we'll be able to locate them." The pair, described as Asians in their 50s, were last seen about 9:15 a.m.

Prosecutors in the Randy Steven Kraft murder trial say a paper with 61 entries, found in his car trunk when he was arrested May 14, 1983, is a death list--Kraft's own score card of how many young men he had killed dating back to late 1971. Kraft's attorneys deny it is a death list, and call it meaningless information that will only inflame his jury. Kraft himself, in a 1983 interview, called the list nothing more than references to friends of his and his roommate at the time.

It was well past midnight, a time when the after-dinner drinks had long since produced their desired effect and tall tales could be told with a reasonably straight face. We had gathered on the stern of the Peace, a 65-foot dive boat preparing to set out from Ventura on a trip to San Miguel, the most westerly and northerly of California's Channel Islands. For now, however, we were content to swap yarns with the crew.

Helicopters and rescue boats suspended their search late Tuesday for two people who witnesses said were swept off a jetty in Corona del Mar by a large wave. "They've been missing for a while. They're presumed dead," said Jim Slikker, an Orange County Sheriff's Harbor Patrol deputy. "It's almost next to impossible to find them with the visibility being bad tonight."

Local historian David W. Muller believes there are two things responsible for the exalted financial status of Newport Beach: dredging and jetties. "There's nothing exotic or O.C. about them," he said, "but they led to the city that exists today; without them, you'd have a marsh."