Lifeguards, beachgoers welcome new tower at Sonoma Coast’s Goat Rock Beach

SONOMA COAST

Looking around from Goat Rock Beach’s new lifeguard tower Friday afternoon, Conor Bracken scanned the surf north and south of him and felt comfortable with what he saw: relatively calm waters and a few scattered beachgoers, most of them back a safe distance from the potentially treacherous shoreline.

The tower, which was installed in mid-May, allows Bracken and other lifeguards at Sonoma Coast State Park to more easily monitor the beach, a highly sought out but sometimes deadly destination. The beach has a ?steeper-than-normal slope into the sea, where powerful waves and currents can quickly overwhelm people, leading to dozens of annual rescues by lifeguards and some drownings over the years.

Before the fiberglass tower was put in, lifeguards patrolled here in a State Parks pickup truck, often stopping and sitting or standing on the outside of the vehicle to look at the people around them. But that afforded far less visibility, Bracken said.

“From here, standing up, we can see every hazard this beach has to offer,” Bracken said. “(It) also increases the approachability and the public security, seeing that there is a lifeguard up here, instead of driving around.”

The park usually keeps one lifeguard in the tower at Goat Rock Beach from about 9 a.m. until the evening, with another one also patrolling in the truck or on foot, said supervising lifeguard Tim Murphy. He said lifeguards have made dozens of “safety contacts” with individuals on the beach but haven’t yet had to perform any major rescues in the wake of the tower’s installation.

Joan Young, a Chico resident who lives for part of each year in Guerneville, was pleased to see the tower in place when she came to the beach Friday with her husband and two young grandchildren. Young, 68, wasn’t so much worried about her own family - she always keeps a close eye on her grandkids - but having come to Goat Rock Beach since she was a child, she was aware of the tragedies that have befallen others here.

“There’s too many people that have died here,” Young said. “People get swept in all the time. If that happens, having a lifeguard (tower) is something you want to have. Maybe some lives will be saved.”

The beach is one of the deadliest in the area, a factor of its popularity and treacherous conditions. A Santa Rosa father and his 6-year-old son drowned in the water here in December, and in 2016, a 75-year-old Cotati woman died after she was swept into the water when she went to leave flowers for her son who had died one year earlier.

While lifeguard towers are common on the flatter beaches of Southern California, the Goat Rock Beach installation was the first on the California coast north of the Golden Gate. Sonoma Coast park officials want to add more, and Murphy said they’ve identified some suitable locations, namely North Salmon Creek, Portuguese and potentially Wright’s beaches.

But it’s not clear when the expansion will be possible.

“Obviously, funding is going to be part of the equation that we’re going to have to consider, and then trying to increase our numbers staff-wise so we have the bodies to put in those towers,” Murphy said. “We don’t want to move forward with more unless we can pretty much ensure we have the staff to man those towers.”

You can reach Staff Writer J.D. Morris at 707-521-5337 or jd.morris@pressdemocrat.com.