Search continues for girl swept away at Laguna Beach in dangerous surf

The rescue window was measured in seconds at Treasure Island Beach, where a mother and her two children were swept into the Pacific Ocean around 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in Laguna Beach. Bystanders pulled the mother and one child from the water, but the other child, a 5-year-old girl, remained missing as search teams returned Wednesday morning.

The incident unfolded along South Laguna during a dangerous south swell that had already put Southern California beaches on alert for strong rip currents and high surf. Officials said the family was caught by powerful water conditions near the shoreline, the kind that can change quickly when a big swell pushes heavy surf into areas that look safe from the sand. At beaches like Treasure Island, the danger is often not the first breaker but the pull beneath it: water that looks manageable can become treacherous fast when current and surge align.

Laguna Beach Marine Safety personnel began searching Tuesday night, and the operation expanded Wednesday with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department Harbor Patrol and the U.S. Coast Guard. The Harbor Patrol Bureau provides around-the-clock law enforcement, marine firefighting and search-and-rescue coverage along Orange County’s 48 miles of coastline, a span that makes the response both immediate and highly coordinated when someone is swept offshore.

The scale of the swell helped explain why local crews treated the case as a full marine search rather than a routine rescue. Reports described the south-southwest swell as one of the biggest in years and, in some accounts, among the largest seen in a decade. In that kind of surf, families can miss the most important warning signs: water moving sideways along the beach, waves breaking farther out than usual, and a sudden loss of footing near the shore.

The search at Treasure Island Beach carried the same hard lesson that follows many coastal emergencies in Southern California: the ocean can turn in moments, especially near dusk when visibility begins to fade and the beach is still crowded with swimmers, walkers and sightseers. For now, the search continued as marine units, sheriff’s personnel and Coast Guard crews worked the shoreline and waterline in South Laguna, where a single wave had separated one child from her family and set off a wide-scale response.