48 people rescued in one day at Hampton Beach
On Wednesday, young boogie boarders and beachgoers were some of the 48 people rescued from the ocean at Hampton Beach, N.H., after getting caught in rip currents.
“That’s pretty high,” said Jim Donahue, chief of Hampton Beach Patrol, who has worked at Hampton Beach for 58 seasons. “The [rip currents] are a little bit more problematic this year — if you have a lot of shifting sand during the wintertime, some of these channels get a little deep.”
No one was hurt, Donahue said, and those rescued varied in age — young children, teenagers, and adults, including a 76-year-old woman. About 90 percent of them were boogie boarders, he said.
“The seabed at Hampton is a little bit irregular — you’ll have some dips in certain areas — and that’s where the water will channel out,” he said. He added that at Hampton Beach, there are about four or five of these dips.
