Dateline: Santa Monica South, Saturday, Sept. 3, 2016... Labor Day Weekend. I arrived for a 9 a.m. shift at SMS Tower #22 to find four (4) large luxury buses parked in the lot and an enormous group of visitors from Arizona camped out on the beach with probably 3 dozen sun shelters set up near the shoreline... Apparently, they arrived just after 7 a.m. and the guards on duty found all the view blocking pop-up shelters on the berm and in front of the tower with no space to move... That got sorted out effectively and diplomatically by OL Ben Gottlieb and OLS Mike Murphy and the shelters were moved away from the tower and back to the tower line. Here are some of the days' photo highlights...
*** Video Alert ! ***
The Crowd From Arizona At SMS Tower #22: The Video
https://youtu.be/0bRopRYkKiA
The Good: Two boards are better than one!
The Good: Capt. Eugene Atanasio on duty
The Good: OL Azad on duty at SMS Tower #22. The Bad: the tagging and paint vandalism that plagues this tower at Bay St. on a regular basis, unfortunately...
The Good: Veteran LACo OL Chris Ro "watching the water"!...
Below, an artsy shot for our more refined blogger audience... :-)
The Bad: the amount of trash on the beach, particularly between the waterline and the berm up to the tower line is absolutely staggering! Here is our SMS Part I social commentary on the disturbing amount of beach trash and human debris we picked up while on foot patrols during the first half of our shift at SMS Tower #22... Sadly, this trash does not get picked up by the City of Santa Monica.
The Good: OL Azad on a foot patrol keeps his rescue can up high so his colleagues can more easily find him! The Bad: The photographer's no look shot almost missed the whole thing!...
The Good: Veteran LACo OL Todd Menzel out of SMS Tower #24, on a foot patrol... Todd worked 60 days on the beach this past rating year!
The Good: Veteran LACo OL, Chris Ro, on duty at SMS Tower #22... Chris is a multi-year summer scheduled SMS recurrent beach lifeguard!...
Yours truly... Thanks Chris for the photo...
The Good: OL Chris Ro, below. Question: Is Chris off duty in this shot? Just ask his t-shirt... of Coors he is!... 8 hours + 1 hour OT... Time to head home for Saturday Nite!...
The Good: Grainy shot of SMS Tower #20 showing Veteran LACo OL, Dave Carpenter, at left on the deck, and briefly doubled with (lost child) Jaden, age 7... helping Dave watch the water! Well done, Dave! Jaden was repatriated with his family a short time later who were found at Tower #27... so Jaden, with his inflatable pink dolphin toy had walked all the way from there to Dave's tower! Not a record by any means, but still impressive for the yound lad. Looks like Dave was keeping Jaden warm in his red fleece! Well done, Dave!
The Good: The Tools Of Our Trade... Sunglasses √ Sunscreen √...
The Ugly: Part II... Still more trash we collected after disposing of the Part I trash at the request of OLS Mike Murphy.
At long last after an 11 hour shift, the sun sets... and we shutter the tower and exit the beach a short time later...
10-4
Respectfully submitted,
"County Recurrent" News
http://CountyRecurrent.blogspot.com
(All photos and videos by & Copyright Will Maguire 2016.)
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