Rescuers busy at the beach

With red flags flying on most local beaches, rescuers stayed busy Sunday, pulling dozens from rip currents up and down the coastline.

By 9:30 Sunday morning, four had been rescued on Destin's beaches, including a man who was taken for evaluation to Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast.

By evening, that number had climbed to more than 20, said Lt. Mike Urenda with the Destin Fire Department.

"The water was really choppy," he said. "We had really bad rip currents." 

A single red flag was flying Sunday in South Walton, an improvement after a busy Saturday that saw Fire District's beach patrol pulling more than 50 people from the surf under double red flag conditions.

Still, there were 11 rescues Sunday, and crews took three people to area hospitals - including a man who had to be intubated, according to Deputy Chief Sean Hughes.

"That is pretty serious," he said. "He'd taken in a bunch of water."

Yellow flags flew on Okaloosa Island, but rescue personnel still pulled at least 15 people from the surf. They rescued 37 Saturday.

"We had persistent rip currents all day," said Tracey Vause, beach safety division chief for Okaloosa County. "We were still busy."

Double red flags continued to fly in Bay County, where the body of a man missing since Saturday afternoon was recovered at about 9:30 a.m Sunday in Panama City Beach, about 100 feet from shore in 15 feet of water near the Carousel supermarket, deputies reported.

Twenty-one-year-old Pierre E. Allen, of Water Valley, Miss., drowned Saturday after apparently coming to the aid of a distressed swimmer, according to a Bay County Sheriff's Office news release.

Allen, an Army paratrooper, was visiting Panama City Beach with friends.

"It is believed that Allen entered the water (Saturday) at about 2 p.m. in an attempt to rescue a distressed swimmer," Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Ruth Sasser said in the release. "Allen became distressed himself, and although the swimmer he intended to help was brought to shore by rescue personnel, Allen disappeared."

As of late Sunday, crews were still searching for a 21-year-old man who was reported missing at about 1 a.m. Sunday.

The Coast Guard dispatched two helicopters to search for the missing man, whose name has not been released, but he had not been found by the evening, when the search was suspended for the day, according to Coast Guard Petty Officer Stephen Lehman.

The search is planned to resume today, he said.

Deputy Chief Hughes, of South Walton, said it's important that people heed warning flags.

"I realize it's deceptive, relatively calm looking, but there are rip currents from one end of the beach to the other and people are getting into trouble," he said. "People are getting into those and it's just like an outgoing stream, it's taking them out.

"Some of them are going at three knots," he added. "An Olympic swimmer swims at about three knots."

(Jonas Hogg and Will Glover from the Panama City News Herald contributed to this report.)