This Is America’s Most Dangerous Beach

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Dec 2, 10:30AM EST

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This Is America’s Most Dangerous Beach — © Xavier Arnau / Getty Images

Beachfront property is among the most expensive in the country. Among the highest priced homes in America are in places like Nantucket; the Hamptons on Long Island; Palm Beach, Florida; and Malibu in California. Owning homes in these places does involve a level of risk. Among them are storms that can create flooding and do substantial water damage or destroy homes completely. Climate change has made this an even larger threat.

Outforia’s recently released “Dangerous Coasts: The United States’ Most Dangerous Beaches” goes well beyond weather considerations. The study considered crime, air pollution, water pollution, “surf zone” fatalities, lightning fatalities, shark attacks and temperatures. The outdoor adventures website used this data to create a composite score that runs from 1 to 10, with 10 as the worst possible score.

There is no geographic pattern to the most dangerous beaches. Many are in states with large populations, particularly California and Florida. California has the largest population among all states, and Florida is third. Plus, both have long coastlines. Florida’s coastline ranks second in length, behind Alaska, and California ranks fifth, behind Louisiana and Maine.

Most of the other most dangerous beaches are along the east coast, in states that include Delaware, New Jersey, North Carolina and Virginia.
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The study found that Venice Beach, which is part of Los Angeles, was the most dangerous. The summary about the beach reads:

One of LA’s most well-known beaches tops the list as the most dangerous beach in the USA. With historical ties to gang activity and a particularly large homeless population, there is a high rate of crimes in the local area, contributing largely to the high danger score.

Daytona Beach was a very close second.

These are the scores of the 10 most dangerous beaches in America:

Venice Beach (Calif.): 7.19
Daytona Beach (Fla.): 7.18
Waikiki Beach (Hawaii): 4.51
Siesta Beach (Fla.): 4.50
Carlsbad Beach (Calif.): 4.34
Emerald Isle (N.C.): 4.24
Deerfield Beach (Fla.): 4.16
Belleair Beach (Fla.): 4.00
Malibu Beach (Calif.): 4.00
Hollywood Beach (Fla.): 3.78

Click here to read about America’s most dangerous cities.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.