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Late Summer Tricks

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“Good Morning. Ma’am, do you mind hopping down out of our lifeguard tower?”

“Why?”

“The towers are there for the lifeguards and we prefer other people don’t sit in them.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“There’s a sign right next to where you’re sitting saying ‘no trespassing’, so it would be the same as sitting in someone else’s house and refusing to leave.”

“Well then I guess I’ll leave. But I’m leaving the beach in that case. It’s too hot out here!”

Late in the summer it seems that people just get frayed. There are more complaints, arguments, fights, and weird things happening than earlier in the season. It’s like the veneer of civility gets burned away by the heat and sun and all the raw emotions people usually have tamped down come boiling to the surface. It can be a challenge, but if I have my head right it can be wildly entertaining. I especially like it when people seem to feel that they have their own little bubble of rules that differ from everyone else.

“Excuse me sir, do you mind putting your dog on a leash?”

“Why?”

“Galveston has a city ordinance requiring dogs to wear leashes. Also, there have been instances where dogs have been off a leash and…..” (you get the idea)

Then it goes into a whole list of reasons that all generally have the same theme that this particular case should be exempt from the rules. Some of the best ones are: “he’s really friendly and loves people”, “she just likes chasing birds and hardly ever bites anyone”, “I have him for protection”, or, my personal all-time favorite, “my dog is on a verbal leash”.

The other common technique that can be fun is the “stall technique”. We open with something along the lines of, “Hey, I’m sorry but you can’t use a tent or tarp in this area. You can, however, use it on the other side of those blue poles” And from there it goes a little something like this:

“What?”

“Can you please move your tarp to the other side of those blue poles?”

“I have to move my tarp?”

“Yes”

“Where?”

“To the other side of the blue poles”

“So…. I can’t have my tarp here?”

After it runs on for a while like that, they realize that even if you keep asking the response is the same. Then they might move it. Or if you’re lucky they might go into the previous technique and point out that they need shade more than other people because…..

End of summer grumbling aside, we got through the weekend pretty well. Despite the very large crowds the water was calm until Monday. We moved around 8,000 people from dangerous areas, made a couple of rescues, and a number of enforcement actions. Busy, but not as overwhelming as it could have been with rough water.

It’s been a busy, hot summer and I don’t think any of my staff minded ending the high season with a whimper as opposed to a bang!

Labor Day Advisory

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With Labor Day upon us we’re expecting several hundred thousand people to be on the island this weekend. That’s a lot of chances to have something go wrong.

Over the past couple of weeks there have been several rescues that we’ve had to make by the rock jetties despite our best efforts to keep people far enough away to avoid trouble. There have also been a couple of incidents involving young children in area pools. Most or all of these incidents happened at least partly due to momentary lapses in judgment.

People do things when on vacation or out recreating that they would never do in their normal life. Parents who no doubt are very attentive to their children lose them repeatedly at our large beach parks. We have had up to 60 lost kids in a single day at Stewart Beach alone. People who are not generally risk takers swim far from shore and/or pay no attention to warning signs, flags, or lifeguard instructions. Are the parents bad parents? Are the people ignoring safety messages intentionally? Not in my opinion.

All of us get in a different mindset when we’re away from our routine and when we do something fun. We throw caution to the wind and immerse ourselves in the sea and sand and fun. This is good to a point and that point is sometimes the shoreline. Water is not our natural element. Things can go wrong quickly in the water so it only takes a momentary lapse of judgment or seconds of inattention for things to break bad.

But is doesn’t have to be that way. Taking a moment to observe your surroundings at the beach or pool does a lot. Asking someone who is knowledgeable, like a lifeguard, what to watch for before getting wet means that you greatly reduce your chances of an accident.

When you go out this weekend to enjoy any type of water remember to take a minute to be aware of your surroundings and potential risk. You also want to remember the basics like not swimming alone, staying hydrated, protecting yourself from the sun, observing signs and flags, feet first first time, alcohol and water don’t mix, and non-swimmers  and children should wear lifejackets. At the beach, you should also avoid swimming in areas where rip currents are likely, like near piers and jetties. These are protected by lifeguards and clearly marked with bilingual, iconic signage. And please don’t swim or wade in the San Luis Pass or Houston Ship Channel.

Choose to swim in areas protected by lifeguards. In beaches guarded by United States Lifesaving Association lifeguards, like Galveston with has an “Advanced Level” agency, your chances of drowning are 1 in 18 million.

But above all, YOU are responsible for the safety of both yourself and your family. Lifeguards provide an extra layer of protection in case your safety net lapses temporarily.

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend. You deserve it. See you on the beach!

4th of July – Review & General Safety

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Whew! The 4th of July 5-day marathon is over and early Wednesday morning, aside from huge piles of trash being efficiently removed by Coastal Zone Management crews, the beaches returned to normal.

The holiday was a good one, with big, mostly well-behaved crowds and water that varied from calm to mildly choppy. We were steady for all 5 days but not overwhelmed. A big part of things seeming manageable was that we were well staffed. Most towers were covered by two guards, and we had a full complement of mobile patrols including a boat in the water. So, even when we had two or three emergencies happening simultaneously, we had enough to backfill those spots.

By the end of the day Tuesday our stats were impressive. 2,745 water safety talks for beach patrons, a boat rescue, 190 enforcements (42 were vehicles mostly on the west end), 64 medical responses (including 4 stingrays and 46 jellyfish stings), 22 lost children reunited with their parents, one rescue (thanks Coast Guard!). The reason that our rescue number was so small was to a large extent because by the end of the holiday we moved 30,219 people away from dangerous areas (rip currents, swimmers too far from shore, etc.).

There’s plenty of summer left, so as a reminder take a few simple safety precautions that can keep you and your family safe while enjoying all that our beaches have to offer. Of course, swimming near a lifeguard and avoiding rip currents are the most important. Rip currents in Texas typically occur near a structure like a jetty or pier. Obey warning signs and instructions from a lifeguard to be safe. If accidentally caught in a rip, stay calm and go with the flow. Call or wave for help if possible. If you’re a good swimmer, try swimming parallel to shore until out of the current, and then back to the sand. If you see someone in a rip, don’t go in after them. Multiple drownings often occur when a well-meaning Good Samaritan goes in without proper equipment or training. Instead, throw a floating object or line to them, like the buoy and throw bag found in the rescue boxes at the end of each rock jetty.

As a general rule, pick a lifeguarded area to swim. You are still responsible for your own safety, but they can provide an added layer of protection if needed. They can help with first aid, lost kids, or virtually any type of beach emergency. Remember to swim with a buddy, obey warning signs and flags, assign a “Water Watcher”, and don’t dive in headfirst. Of course, non-swimmers and small children should wear a properly fitted life jacket when in or around any type of open water or swimming area.

We are still looking at some pretty hot and humid weather so be sure and take precautions.

Overall, use good common sense. Know your limits. The ocean isn’t a pool or pond, so you should be extra careful. Then go have fun!

4th & Leadership

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Planning for an event as large as a 5-day 4th of July weekend is quite a thing. We check equipment for the guards, Community Emergency Response (CERT) and the park security programs, and make sure the Survivor Support Network is ready to go. We make sure we schedule everyone including additional coverage for the towers, a boat in the water, additional patrols at the parks for lost children and other issues.

But there are some less tangible preparations that have to be made well in advance that have relate to team cohesion and initiative. With 32 miles of beach to cover, 70 miles of waterfront that we may respond to, night calls, and whatever craziness gets thrown at us, we have to be able to respond to multiple events simultaneously and all the parts have to be able to work autonomously or fold into small groups made up of various people and response groups that work a problem together.

For a couple of years, we’ve been working on these areas, and have an internal program that is peer led. So, lifeguards work with lifeguards to make sure all the elements are in place for how to deal with stress, a variety of people and situations, and to work as a cohesive unit. Team cohesion, leadership, and physical and emotional resilience are essential ingredients for making it all come together.

We have an amazing team of peer leaders that run workshops once a week and we have small modules that are included in our daily training as well. It’s really starting to pay off and has permeated throughout our organization. Bill Bower is one of our peer leaders. He described an exercise in the following communication to the staff:

“I wanted to share with everyone what went on in our Saturday workout. I see it as a major step forward for our class. When we arrived at headquarters, we were told there was no workout, to pick up her bags, and head to tower 17. What happened next was a textbook example of what we’re trying to teach. Captain Pryor gathered everyone around and explained that the majority of guards were not swimming the jetty correctly. He demonstrated complete ownership of the situation, acknowledging that if most people were doing it wrong then they probably hadn’t been correctly instructed on how to do it. This is exactly what we’re trying to teach the guards to do with beach patrons. He explained how Beach Patrol wanted them to do it and then the all-important reason why they should do it. This was something most of them had never heard before. He then took the group in the water and showed them exactly what needed to be done and led them through it. I think this interaction really hit home with them showing how a true leader uses extreme ownership to motivate and lead. It was one of the best examples of leadership I’ve ever seen, and I plan to reference it in our future discussions.”

Night Calls and Memorial Prep

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At 3am a call came over about an attempted suicide at a beach on the west end. Supervisor Stephen Limones was on call and rolled out of bed and drove with lights and sirens to the scene to meet police, fire, and EMS. A family was on the beach and one of them was upset and swam out reportedly to end his life. Fortunately, in this case the family was able to bring him back to shore just as the emergency responders pulled up. EMS recognized that the person was having some kind of episode and made the decision to bring him to the emergency room for assessment and support.

5am the same morning close to the same location as the earlier call, a man was reportedly on narcotics and had evaded the police by running out into the water. Stephen showed up and went out to try to talk the man back to shore. As he got close, the man dove face down in the water and floated until Stephen got to him. Stephen took a risk and grabbed the man from behind and drug him to shore, speaking reassuringly to him. Police officers took over once they reached shallow water and ended up taking him into custody, mostly to protect him from himself until he came down.

More people more of the year means more calls of every type – day or night. This is the reality for first responders of all types working on an island that sees more visitors each year. 8.1 million people coming to the island means a larger number of 911 calls of all types, particularly beach related incidents.

Fortunately, with a lot of work by the Beach Patrol staff, we’ve run an almost continuous lifeguard academy, mostly because foreign Work/Tourist j1 visa holders don’t come en masse, but trickle in these days. Counting those in the academy we are up to a little more than 90 lifeguards, 42 of which are j1 visa holders, plus our 15 full-time Supervisors. We’re not at our target number, but we feel confident at this point we’ll be able to cover all the towers we have in our projections. We’ll be able to hit all the rock jetties each day plus some additional seawall towers where they’re needed. We’ll also be able to start our daily west end patrol schedule from Memorial to Labor Day weekends, and cover Stewart Beach, East Beach, and Dellanara Park.

To add to that we’ve got a new class of Wave Watchers graduated and out checking the beaches, Survivor Support Network is ready for another season, CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) will be here for holidays and as needed, and our partner public safety groups are ready to go.

Wednesday around 5pm at 37th we’ll kick off our annual “night swim” lifeguard academy graduation exercise and run, swim, and paddle our way to Stewart Beach. Come support your lifeguard crew by cheering them on as they make their way through this grueling challenge!

Academy

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The group picked their way gingerly across the higher rocks, which were only covered in white, foamy water intermittently. One person, older and moving confidently up and down the rocks, leapt from a higher rock, tucking his rescue tube firmly against his body in midflight, and landed smoothly on top of one of the larger waves. He took a couple of strokes, rolled to the side, and smoothly slid swim fins on. Swimming back to the rocks at an angle against the rip current, he motioned for the first of the lifeguard candidates to follow, as he rose and fell with the swell.

The first brave soul moved towards the rock the instructor had jumped from. Holding her rescue tube and excess strap in the hand that was opposite from the direction the waves came from she ensured the waves wouldn’t smack the tube into her and cause her to slide across the barnacle covered rocks. Keeping her center of gravity low, but her butt off the rocks, she kept her balance while letting the energy of the smaller waves pass beneath her. She moved lower quickly before a larger wave could knock her off her feet. You could see her force herself to focus and tune out the voice telling her all the ways this could go bad. A wave approached. She knew at this point she had no choice. Once you’re low enough to jump, a decent sized wave will scrape you across the rocks if you freeze. She didn’t. She jumped a little high and landed too close to the jump point. She didn’t get the tube flat against her body, causing her hands to sink too low on impact. But her head was just right- tilted back with her face forward.  She timed the jump a little early and landed in the whitewater. But overall, it was a pretty good first jump. And practicing in decent sized surf, although it looks scary, has a much greater margin of error.

Each year, the Galveston Island Beach Patrol trains Lifeguard Candidates, or “Rookies”, in a rigorous 100 hour Lifeguard Training Academy. The Academy includes United States Lifesaving Association Open Water accreditation, Red Cross Emergency Responder certification, tourist ambassador training, leadership, resilience, and intercultural competency. Lifesaving skills open water swimming techniques are first learned in a pool environment and perfected in the open water of the Gulf of Mexico.

Lifeguard candidates will be paid a training wage for the time they spend on the training course. Upon successful completion of the Lifeguard Academy, candidates will be promoted to Lifeguard 1 status and will be eligible to work for Galveston Island Beach Patrol at up to $20 per hour. More importantly they’ll return home each day knowing they prevented accidents and/or saved a life.

Tomorrow (Saturday) at 9am we’ll be holding lifeguard tryouts at the UTMB Fieldhouse. If you or someone you know is interested in joining the team and family, please check our website for details and show up at 9. We need you!

Spring Break Wrap Up

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Spring Break started with a bang and ended with a whimper. That first weekend was scary from our perspective! Massive crowds, lots of current and waves, warm air and water, and sparse lifeguard coverage kept us moving fast, as we raced from hot spot to hot spot to keep people away from the rip currents near the jetties.

Early Saturday morning I called the police and fire departments for some help and they ran patrols both days on the seawall to help us spot trouble developing. Its good to have friends. Because of their efforts, some really hard work by the Beach Patrol staff, and a bit of luck we got through the first weekend. Then it got cold and most of the tourists that were all over the beach went to the other island attractions and stayed there for the rest of the week through last weekend.

Even with the cold weather, our stats over Spring Break were impressive, especially when considering most of the numbers happened over a three day period. I usually give a general overview when giving stats, but its interesting to see the specifics:

We moved 9,605 people from danger- mostly away from the rocks. We enforced park rules or city ordinances 84 times (11 of these were vehicles driving illegally on the beach), and Park Security did this 187 times (they only worked the first weekend). We responded to 18 medical calls, 7 of them were serious enough to be transported to the hospital. We responded to one possible drowning and made 4 rescues. We logged giving tourist information 137 times (this stat is notoriously lower than the reality of how many tourists we have direct contact with). We reunited a couple of lost kids with their parents and gave 1,344 water safety talks.

Those numbers are a good reflection of how much work we do. But when compared to the summertime numbers we accumulate when all 34 lifeguard towers are staffed and our trucks cover the entire beachfront, they’re pretty small. Just to give a general idea, in an average year we routinely move between 300,000 and 500,000 people from dangerous areas, make 3-4,000 enforcements, do around 30,000 water safety talk contacts, etc. The numbers are really staggering and show how much preventative work our lifeguards do. If you think about it, we do most of the preventative actions over a 9-month period, 7 of which we have guards in towers and the other two we’re working out of trucks only. That math comes out to just under 1,500 swimmers moved per day, or 12,500 preventative actions per lifeguard tower per season.

Those numbers are pretty overwhelming when you think what would happen if we weren’t there during the critical times and places to move people away from potentially lethal rip currents. It explains why our recent tryouts and academy that only produced three graduates terrified our staff.

It explains why we are such fanatics about all things that make up the complicated beach safety defense web.

Academy is coming…

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The group of young men and women radiated nervousness as they lined up on the sand. “On your mark, get set, GO!” shouted the instructor as they raced down the beach around the tower and into the water.

I was about half way out to the buoy when a group of good swimmers caught me and basically swam right over me. By the time I got going again a wave smacked me right in the face as I was taking a breath. When I got to the buoy I had to hang on for a few seconds to catch my breath before pushing on.

The year was 1983 and I finished 11th out of 30 in the Beach Patrol tryouts. Fortunately, I’ve come a long way from then, as has the Beach Patrol! There was no formal training and no special first aid course other than what I got when I took the Red Cross pool lifesaving course. I was just given a radio and sent to work.

Saturday, March 11th is the first of three tryouts for the Beach Patrol at 9am at the UTMB pool. If you know anyone that wants to work on the Beach Patrol (and be a hero!) spread the word. The swim qualification to be admitted into the training academy is 500 meters in 10 minutes or less. Details are on our website. Candidates who want to start working right away can go through the first lifeguard academy over spring break. We pay them to attend the school where they are certified in CPR, First Aid, and beach lifeguarding. They also go through training in tourist relations, city codes pertaining to Galveston’s beaches, Gulf Coast ecology, and near shore topography and hydrology. Coupled with all the classroom work is hands on training in how to swim and make rescues in surf, search and recovery, and the basics of lifesaving sport. It’s a busy week and we’ll do two more academies in May so we can work with everyone’s schedule.

In addition to training for new lifeguards, we are starting our annual training session for dispatchers, supervisors, and personal watercraft rescue operations. By the time Memorial Weekend hits we’ll be up to speed. Despite the huge amount of effort all this requires of our permanent staff members there’s a big payoff for both our staff and the public. The inconsistent training that once took a whole summer is taught in a uniform manner. Each employee is taught the same material and instilled with similar core values. Any one of our guards can handle whatever is thrown at them when and if they complete the training.

So for those that would like to try being a beach guard, I hope you’ll give it a shot. I’m so happy I squeaked in all those years ago. For me it was a life changer. Not many people get to go home at the end of the day with the knowledge that they prevented accidents and/or saved someone.

Drones Revisited

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A few years ago, some footage of what was reported to be the first real water rescue made by a drone at Lennox Head, New South Wales, Australia went viral. To me it looked staged. There were two swimmers just outside the surf line kind of floating around. The footage was from the drone itself as it dropped this package from maybe 100 feet up. Upon impact this big sausage looking thing inflated. Two swimmers swam over to it and floated on it back to shore. At one point it looked like a wave knocked one of them off it, but the guy swam easily back to it and rode it in. The announcer talked about how it was the first rescue by drones.

But drones have been used by lifeguard agencies for quite awhile now for surveillance. There are a couple of beaches that I know of that fly the on a set schedule as shark spotters and others that use them for surveillance of isolated or remote areas without guards. The operators have to be trained as pilots since they’re a governmental agency. Newport Beach, which is pretty cashed up, flies them three times a week for a 20 minute flight. If they see a shark bigger than a certain size they increase the schedule until it moves out of the area.

Mountain rescue drones have also been shown to be pretty effective in spotting lost hikers and dropping survival packages to them. The ocean has been more of a challenge. However, one recent local successful example is the Galveston County Community Emergency Response Team used them for a body search at the San Luis Pass and were able to see a few feet beneath the surface and were able to comb a lot of marshland that we had a hard time getting to by water or by land.

Most of the commonly available and affordable drones currently have a flight time of 20 minutes and can’t run in over 20 mile an hour winds. But some of the fancier ones being used by public safety groups are a bit better in-flight time, can fly in slightly higher winds, and can carry a variety of types of cameras including thermal imaging, infra-red, etc. They’re proving to be useful in some conditions for search and recovery operations.

I think the day is near where, if you have the resources, drones may be able to augment beach lifesaving programs in very real and cost-effective ways. Particularly in remote locations or for search and recovery operations. I’m hoping, once the Beach Patrol gets into a permanent building “forever home” that we will be able to use drones to fly periodic passes of the shoreline. There is some really cool software out there that is on the verge of being able to consistently identify both rip currents and swimmers in distress. And we can program them to alert us if people are in or near the area by the rock jetties where dangerous rip currents are ever-present.

SCENARIOS

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Last Wednesday was rainy and overcast before the front came in. There was some sea fog, but not to the point that it severely limited visibility. Lt. Kirwin and Sgt. Buck slipped down to the water and set a mannequin in the water. Buck donned a wetsuit, booties, and gloves and swam out.

Supervisors Lucero and Knight staged at the entrance to Stewart Beach in a rescue truck. They knew they were going to respond to a scenario but didn’t know what it would be. Then, when everything and everyone was in position, they received the call. The drill was a few people missing in the water, resulting from an accident. They had to race down to the Headquarters, retrieve a jet ski, launch it, and search for the missing swimmers. One of them, played by Buck, was ok with some minor issues. Another was a partially submerged victim that had to be removed from the water, assessed, and ultimately CPR needed to be performed.

This was just one of several scenarios we’ve been running, getting the crew to be razor sharp for the opening of the beach season. Working in pairs or small groups, some staff members participate in scenarios, while others complete work on towers, signs, complete leadership, resiliency, or intercultural competency training in the office, or work patrolling the beaches.

Once the seasonal lifeguards return in March, they too will participate in similar activities, but not to the extent of the full-time staff members. Our full-time staff make up the vast majority of the Supervisors, are all Emergency Medical Technicians and have quite a bit of additional training that our seasonal Lifeguards aren’t required to have, such as Swiftwater Technician certification, National Incident Management System training, Tourism Ambassador certification, and some are Peace Officers. They are also the teachers and instructors for the seasonal staff and teach everything from Red Cross Emergency Response to Personal Rescue Watercraft Operator instruction.

There are benefits to having our year-round crew trained up in time to teach the guards and being ready to respond to a myriad of emergencies. It’s also good to have them be very used to the day-to-day conditions, so when they jump in the cold water to make a rescue they know what to expect and are comfortable in cold water, limited visibility, and big surf. We want to be comfortable and prepared for all kind of conditions so they can focus on problem solving in difficult rescue situations. But it’s also important that they problem solve together.

Modern professional lifesaving has changed significantly in the past few decades. The basic techniques of saving someone are very similar to when lifesaving took off in the early 1900’s as a result of a boom in recreational swimming that resulted from a growth in a leisure class. The big difference is an emphasis on teamwork. What used to be “One beach one lifeguard”, in the immortal words of Leroy Colombo, has now morphed into “We’re only as strong as our weakest link”.