A 5-year-old girl is missing and her father is dead after they were swept into the ocean by a wave at Garrapata State Park along the Big Sur coast Friday afternoon, according to authorities.
The Monterey County Sheriff’s Office responded to the incident, which occurred just before 1 p.m. Friday when the girl’s father attempted to rescue her from waves measuring 15 to 20 feet, authorities said.
Both were swept into the ocean, officials said in a statement, and the girl’s mother was also pulled into the water as she tried to reach out to them.
While the woman was able to get back to shore on her own, an off-duty California State Parks peace officer pulled the man from the water and began CPR. The man was taken to a hospital where he was later declared dead.
The woman was listed in stable condition with mild hypothermia. A 2-year-old child who was also at the scene at the time was unharmed.
The Sheriff’s Office, along with California State Parks, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Coast Guard are continuing to search for the missing girl, including by helicopter.
Search efforts were briefly suspended overnight due to weather conditions and lightning, and a beach hazard warning was issued for the surrounding areas at the time.
The intense waves were not directly caused by the rains affecting the Pacific coast, but were generated by winds of up to 70 mph that are part of the larger weather pattern, according to the National Weather Service office in Monterey.
“With the increased wave action, there’s a lot more energy in the ocean,” said NWS meteorologist Lamont Bain.
What the family may have experienced is a “sneaker wave,” where a successive wave rushes further onshore than the majority of the waves that have been breaking.
“That sneaker wave has more energy and that’s usually what catches people by surprise,” Bain said.
The National Weather Service warned that people should stay off the beaches on Friday due to the storm, including in Monterey County. Meteorologists cautioned that waves of up to 18 feet were possible all along the Pacific coast, and that some locations could see waves as high as 23 feet.
The National Weather Service office in Oxnard has also issued beach hazard warnings — an label encompassing a variety of dangerous conditions — in southwestern Santa Barbara County and coastal areas of San Diego and Orange County.
“The bottom line is when there’s a beach hazard statement we are trying to get people cognizant that there’s an increased risk for these kinds of things,” Bain said.
With the increased risk of riptides and sneaker waves, “ideally you align your actions to mitigate something happening,” Bain said.
Times staff writer Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.
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