spring 2010 - vol. 26, no. 3...spring 2010 - vol. 26, no. 3 2 american lifeguard magazine, spring...

36 AMERICAN LIFEGUARD MAGAZINE, SPRING 2010

SPRING 2010 - VOL. 26, NO. 3

2 AMERICAN LIFEGUARD MAGAZINE, SPRING 2010 AMERICAN LIFEGUARD MAGAZINE, SPRING 2010 35

ALM E X E C U T I V E T E A M

USLA Executive BoardPresident

B. Chris Brewster, San Diego, [email protected]

Vice-President

Joe [email protected]

Treasurer

Rob Williams, Newport Beach, CA [email protected]

Secretary

Nikki Bowie, Charleston, SC [email protected]

Executive Delegate

Charlie [email protected]

International Liaison

Peter Davis, Galveston, TX [email protected]

Advisor

Tim Gallagher, Avon-by-the-Sea, [email protected]

Medical Advisor

Dr. Peter Wernicki, Vero Beach, [email protected]

Legal Advisor

John "Chip" More, Avon-by-the-Sea, [email protected]

American Lifeguard Magazine StaffPublisher/Editor

Mike Bartlett, Huntington Beach, [email protected]

Assistant Editors

Charlie Hartl, Avon-by-the-Sea, NJMichael A. Beuerlein,

Huntington Beach, CA

Staff Writers

Mike Bartlett, Huntington Beach, CAB. Chris Brewster, San Diego, CADr. Peter Hartsock,

US Public Health ServiceRick Gould, Santa Clarita, CAPhil Rogers, Cape May, NJPeter Davis, Galveston, TX

Junior Jam Editor

Jon Mitchell, [email protected]

Membership Liaison

Charlie Hartl, Avon-by-the-Sea, NJ [email protected]

Design/Typesetting

Jennifer Velasquez, Torrance, [email protected]

Staff Photographers

Jo Wagenhhals, SoutheastJoel Gitelson, LA County, CAMike Bartlett, Huntington Beach, CABill Richardson, Huntington Beach, CA

USLA Regional PresidentsNew England

Position Vacant

Mid-Atlantic

Ed [email protected]

South Atlantic

Tom [email protected]

Southeast


Great Lakes


Gulf Coast

Tony [email protected]

Northwest

Cathy [email protected]

Southwest (CSLSA)

Rob [email protected]

Pacific Islands

Ralph [email protected]

AMERICAN LIFEGUARD MAGAZINE, SPRING 2010 3

Bylaws and Policies

John “Chip” [email protected]

Certification

Tony [email protected]

Competition

Ed [email protected]

Equipment Research

Dave [email protected]

Grant Solicitation

James [email protected]

Heroic Acts Awards

Adrienne [email protected]

International

Peter [email protected]

Junior Lifeguards

Reenie [email protected]

Magazine

Mike [email protected]

Membership

Charlotte [email protected]

Public Education

Denise [email protected]

Public Information and

Media Relations

Tom [email protected]

Sign Standards

Ralph [email protected]

Statistics

Rick [email protected]

Ways & Means


Website


USLA Special Assignments

I N T H I S I S S U E

United States Lifesaving Association Mission Statement

www.usla.org866-FOR-USLA (367-8752)

We are America’s nonprofit, professional association of beach life-guards and open water rescuers. USLA works to reduce the incidence ofdeath and injury in the aquatic environment through public education,national lifeguard standards, training programs, promotion of high levelsof lifeguard readiness, and other means. All correspondence other thanfor the magazine should be sent to: USLA Corporate Office, P.O. Box 366,Huntington Beach, CA 92648 or [email protected].

American Lifeguard Magazine™American Lifeguard Magazine™ is published and distributed to

every paid member of the USLA as a provision of their membership. Ifyou wish to publish an article or submit a letter to the editor, address allsubmissions to: American Lifeguard Magazine™, 15481 CottonwoodCircle, Huntington Beach, CA, 92647, or [email protected]. Entire contentsprotected by the USLA. All rights reserved. No part of this publicationmay be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in anyform by any means - electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise- without the prior consent of ALM. Unsolicited materials, including allphotographs, are submitted at the sender’s risk and ALM accepts noresponsibility. The opinions expressed are strictly those of the contribu-tors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ALM or the USLA.

ALM Advertising Information The USLA manages the American Lifeguard Magazine™ and pub-

lishes it tri-annually with a Summer Issue (July 1), Winter Issue (Nov. 1),and a Spring Issue (Feb. 1). The 36 page publication is mailed directly toits 14,000 members comprised of ocean lifeguards, administrators, juniorguards, competitors and alumni. The American Lifeguard Magazine™serves to inform USLA members on a variety of public safety topics rang-ing from training and educational programs to innovative products, prac-tices and services. More importantly, it is the only national magazine totarget beach lifeguards and open water rescuers. The rates are:

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Cover Shot: July 4th, 2010, Huntington Beach,CA. Photo courtesy of Chris Clarke, HuntingtonBeach, CA

IN THIS ISSUE

President’s Message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Providing Lifeguards Makes Economic Sense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

65–Year–Old Sets Age Record for NPS Surfguard Pre-Employment Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

Waterman By Choice, Lifeguard By Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Lifeguarding in Lima . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

USLA Spring National Meeting in Galveston, Texas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Brewster Receives ISHOF’s Paragon Award . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Boat Fire in Huntington Harbor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Reading the Rip: Scientists and Lifeguards Tackle Killer Currents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

New Jersey Lifeguard Joins the Coast Guard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Woman Is the Youngest to Cross an Ocean Alone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

USLA’s Carl Martinez Recognized for his Dedicated Service . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

P R E S I D E N T ’ S M E S S A G EB. Chris Brewster, San Diego, CA

If you want to be respected as aprofessional, you’ve got to act like aprofessional.

I was reminded of that dictum asI recently toured the brand newbeach patrol headquarters in MiamiBeach with Lt. Gerry Falconer. Onthe beach at 10th Street and OceanDrive, it includes a spacious workoutfacility, a ready room, a classroom,several individual offices, a recep-tion area, a locker room, and a vari-ety of related facilities. The life-guards are no longer crammed intoa substandard facility. The membersof this recently USLA certifiedagency are treated as public safetyprofessionals.

Miami Beach is not alone in themetamorphosis of lifeguard facilities.A few years ago, the Volusia County(Florida) Beach Patrol headquarterswas rebuilt. By all accounts it's anincredible building, 23,000 squarefeet in size, with a large communitymeeting area, along with all of theaccoutrements included in the MiamiBeach facility, and more.

Los Angeles County just complet-ed a brand new $5 million lifeguardheadquarters in Avalon on SantaCatalina Island. The paramedic life-guards there will now work from a7,000 square foot, two-story,Spanish-style building adjacent to thecity's fire station. It includes two largekitchens and sleeping quarters for thetwo to three full-time lifeguard para-medics assigned there at any one

time, as well as five part-time life-guards in summer. There are two dayrooms, a reception office for the pub-lic, and a 4-vehicle apparatus bay.

In 2006, one of San Diego's life-guard observation stations I'dworked at in the Pacific Beach area,where we could barely fit a singleJeep in the garage, and where theunisex locker room and ready roomwere on the observation deck, wasreplaced with a 4,400 square footfacility. It includes separate lockerspace for men and women, offices,sleeping quarters for lifeguards onthe 24-hour response shift, a multi-vehicle garage, and a commanding,isolated observation deck. I waspleased to have a small hand in thebuilding's planning.

A year prior, a new headquar-

ters building opened in HuntingtonBeach. The two-story, $4 million,12,000 square foot facility cameequipped with surveillance gear, anobservation deck, office space, sep-arate male/female locker rooms,and a 14 vehicle garage, amongmany other features. Steps away, astandalone 5,500 square footMarine Safety Educational Centerwas built for the training of life-guards and junior lifeguards.

It was not always this way, ofcourse. I recall, in the 1980s, work-ing out of facilities that were primi-tive, at best. At San Diego's Black’sBeach, we sat in flimsy, foldingbeach chairs upon the overturnedrescue board atop our emergencyvehicle, so that we could get a bet-ter view of the teeming crowds (ofmostly nudists). Our restroom wasthe ocean. At North Pacific Beach inSan Diego, we worked out of a two-level, collapsible plywood shack,and walked to the public restroom.We kept ‘em floating, but we felt likeitinerant workers.

There were certainly advances inthe 1980s and 1990s. Some largerlifeguard facilities were built in afew places, but they were the wel-come aberration, not the norm.Thankfully, those primitive days oflifesaving are becoming memories.Appropriately sized, well constructedfacilities are increasingly rising onbeaches around the US. In San


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Diego, three new permanent towersare slated to be built in the next fewyears; in Laguna Beach, if regulato-ry hurdles can be overcome, a newheadquarters is budgeted; and inRedondo Beach, a shared 4,000square foot facility for lifeguards andharbor patrol officers is in the works.

There is a reason for all of this.Our young profession, which beganin earnest only a little over 100years ago, is transforming in the pub-lic mind from one of a casual sum-mer avocation, to one of a respect-ed, essential public safety service.And while we may still seem to behurt a little more than other public

safety providers in a down economyand rewarded a little less in an upeconomy, we are on the move, asMartin Luther King said, “Like anidea whose time has come.”

The opportunity to work as a pro-fessional lifeguard is a gift few willever experience. Those who camebefore us felt obligated to make itbetter for those who came after. Andthey did so. It takes many years tobuild the sort of professional reputa-tion that demands the respect impliedby these lifesaving edifices. It takesyears to plan them, fund them, andbuild them. And those who will bene-fit by them are now similarly obligat-

ed to ensure that lifeguards who

come after them have it better too.

The torch is passed.

Tomorrow, when you put on your

uniform, make sure it’s clean and

neat; make sure you look like a pro-

fessional; go about your day with

dignity and humility; remember that

you represent us all, and that it is

our collective image that allows our

profession to advance.

If you want to be respected as a

professional, you’ve got to act like a

professional. We have. We are. We

progress. Lifesaving aye.


PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE... from page 5


PROVIDING LIFEGUARDS MAKES ECONOMIC SENSEJoe McManus, Southeast Region

Florida has nearly 700 miles ofbeaches, world famous for their beautyand accessibility. According to visitflori-da.org , beaches are the primary desti-nation of tourists who, incidentally,added $65.2 billion in taxable sales tothe Florida economy in 2008. Touristsare not alone in using Florida’s beach-es; they are also used by residents for avariety of activities. Safety serviceproviders understand that aquatic activi-ties in coastal waters pose certain risksto the health, safety and welfare of thepopulation enjoying those activities. Ripcurrents are an all too present danger inthe surf. It is for this reason that stateand local governments fund the nearly50 public lifeguard agencies operatingin Florida today.

At a time when economies areunder duress, some may wonder if tax-payers can afford to continue to fundgovernment lifeguard operations. A bet-ter way of posing the question might be:can we afford not to? In 2001, theCenters for Disease Control andPrevention (CDC) issued its LifeguardEffectiveness report which, based on aneconomic cost-benefit analysis, found“Although water-related injuries anddrownings already result in tremendous

[comprehensive] costs, they would besubstantially higher without lifeguards.”

Just over fifty percent of Florida’slifeguard agencies currently report theiroperational statistics annually to theUnited States Lifesaving Association(USLA), a national, non-profit organiza-tion dedicated to reducing the incidenceof drowning in the open water environ-ment. These combined agencies report-ed 55 million beach visits in Florida in2008, with lifeguards logging just fewerthan 6,000 aquatic rescues. If one per-cent of these rescues had instead result-ed in death due to the absence of life-guard protection, the economic value ofthose deaths, based upon statistics com-piled by the National Safety Council,would exceed $270 million.

The primary responsibility of a life-guard is to save lives. Lifeguards per-form work that is physically demandingand arduous; it is work that requiresextraordinary agility and mental acuity.Lifeguards are the only class of emer-gency services workers who are per-formance tested annually, throughouttheir careers.

Nearly fifty percent of Florida’s life-guard agencies are currently managedby Public Safety Departments. Lifeguard

agencies are required by law to enterinto a memorandum of understandingwith the emergency services licensee intheir respective areas of operation.Some lifeguard agencies have policepowers and some share responsibilityfor evacuations during natural disasters.Coastal lifeguards are recognized as aconstituency group member of theFlorida Department of Health’s EMSAdvisory Council.

To be sure, the circumstances of therecent and tragic incident in which kite-surfer Steve Schafer lost his life due to ashark attack, and Martin County life-guard Dan Lund risked his in an effort tosave Schafer, were extraordinary, butthe professional lifeguard is always pre-pared and willing to respond to unex-pected life-threatening emergencies. Inreturn, lifeguards ask only to be recog-nized and supported for the type ofwork they perform.

About the author: Joe McManus isvice-president of USLA (www.usla.org)and president of the Florida EMSAdvisory Council’s lifeguard constituen-cy group. He is a national registry EMTand has been a lifeguard since 1974.

The USLA has arranged for deep discounts and special deals with leading companies that offer products of value to USLA members.Visit the USLA Home page (at the bottom) or the USLA Store, at: http://www.usla.org/store/store.asp

Example discounts available to you:- 45% off Da Fin swim fins- 50% off Hobie polarized sunglasses (including special deals on prescription sunglasses)- 50% off almost all the products offered for sale by Finis- Special discounts on Ford automobiles.As well, lifeguards, chapters, and regions can purchase clothing and other items with the USLA logo embroidered on them at UniservGuardGear. And you can purchase rings with the USLA logo from Jostens.The USLA is committed to helping lifeguards get the best equipment at the best prices. Don't forget to sign up for your membershiptoday through your chapter or at: http://membership.usla.org/memberlogin.asp


“Am I the only one on Medicare who is taking the

test today?” With these words, Don Davis presented

proof of his age as he registered to take the National

Park Service’s (NPS’) Surf-Lifeguard Pre-Employment Test

at Fordham University on January 9. As it turns out, he

was. The participant next closest to him in age that day

was 49.

Davis, a 65-year-old former chief lifeguard for City

of New York Parks Department, successfully completed

the test as an annual requirement of all those seeking to

work on the surf-lifeguard staff at Gateway National

Recreation Area.

Davis’ noteworthy performance was not lost on

Gateway National Recreation Area Water Safety

Coordinator Carl Martinez or the other test participants.

“All participants that day witnessed the truly inspiring

power of personal example,” said Martinez. “Whether

they were 15 or 49 years old, each of them will retain

the memory of Don’s feat. And, in life, it really does not

get very much better than that.”

The three-part test consists of timed performance

objectives designed to measure for factors directly relat-

ed to surf-lifeguard work, such as speed, strength, and

stamina; knowledge of basic swimming-rescue and adult

CPR procedures; and readily observable skill in effective-

ly applying such knowledge under stressful conditions.

The first part of the test requires completion of a 600-

yard swim in less than 10 minutes (in a 25-yard pool or

other measured course, using a swim stroke on the front

only). Davis completed the required distance in 9:45 min-

utes. By contrast, another test-taker, age 20, failed this

section of the test with a finish time of 10:03 minutes.

The next section of the test, the speed rescue,

involves swimming 50 yards to a dummy; towing that

dummy 50 yards back to the starting point; quickly exit-

ing the pool; then performing three cycles of adult CPR

on a manikin—all in less than 4 minutes. Davis complet-

ed this section of the test in 3:25 minutes.

The final part of the test requires completion of a 1_-

mile run in less than 12 minutes (on a _-mile track or

other measured course). Davis completed the required

distance in 11:36 minutes. By contrast, another test-

taker, age 29, failed this part of the test with a finish

time of 12:07 minutes.

Davis passed the required test to qualify for a highly

coveted spot on the surf-lifeguard staff of Gateway

National Recreation Area.

Since the park’s first summer season, in 1974, this

staff of some 150 dedicated women and men has pro-

vided professional life-guarding services to more than

100 million beach goers. Gateway National Recreation

Area sees over 9 million visitors a year, making it one

of the most visited sites in the National Park System, in

the largest metropolitan area in the country.

65–Y E A R –O L D S E T S A G E R E C O R D F O R NPSS U R F G U A R D P R E -E M P L O Y M E N T T E S T

Sandy Hook, NJ

In this article, I amgoing to be talkingabout some conceptsand ideas that are“food for thought” forthe beach lifeguard. Ifput into practice, theseconcepts can raise thepercentages for afavorable outcome dur-ing any myriad ofemergent situations thatone may encounterwhile on or off duty.Hopefully some of thiscan pertain to you and your workenvironment. Enjoy.

In regards to our lifeguardshere at my agency, I am very for-tunate and honored to be in theposition to oversee training. I getto implement and try new ideasand concepts and I get a lot offeedback while doing so. Onceor twice per year I get to speakwith candidates that are in the“San Diego Regional LifeguardAcademy”. When addressingacademy students over the lastfew years, I have always talkedabout the concept of being a“Waterman!” I ask for students togive their definition of the wordand we get some neat responses.All of them are usually correct tosome extent if not entirely so. Itmakes for an interesting start toan interesting set of concepts.

Watermen come in all typesand sizes and all walks of life.There is a chapter in James

Michener’s book “Chesapeake”called “The Waterman”. These aremen who made their living dredg-ing oysters in all kinds of condi-tions on the venerable skipjack. Iam sure they know nothing of tow-ing into big waves like LairdHamilton does and he is no doubtan accomplished waterman aswell. To me, the word“Waterman” when used to definean individual is someone who hasa very complete sense of the envi-ronment that they live, work, andor recreate in. This individual hasan exquisite knowledge andunderstanding of the elements atplay around them and an expertunderstanding of the tasks theyundertake. And to all you bigstrong guys out there, don’t thinkeven for a second that the termonly applies to men. Two of thebest lifeguards I work with arewomen that can swim, paddle,and make rescues with the best ofem’!!! They are an excellent exam-

ple of what we shouldall strive for in regardsto competence withinour operational area.

Now that we havedecided on an accept-able definition for theaforementioned, wecan get to taking alook at some specifics.What I like to do isdraw a large circle onthe chalk board. Then Iask all the students totell me everything you

can do in the near-shore oceanenvironment (near-shore shouldbe defined as three nautical mi.or less) where we work. Youshould try it and see how manythings you can come up with.Place each activity in the circle toform a “pie chart”. While youmake your chart, be sure to makeit as thorough as possible. Forexample; You can dive in theocean. So when you place“Dive” on your chart, is that athorough answer? Maybe not…You can free-dive, SCUBA Dive tosport diving depth limits, or youcould be a deep diver trained in“Tri-mix” diving etc. I am sureyou get the point. Once you real-ly get into it, you begin to see anabsolute multitude of possibleactivities one can do in our workenvironment. Oh, and don’t for-get to put “lifeguarding” or some-thing of the like on there as well.


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WATERMAN BY CHOICE, LIFEGUARD BY PROFESSIONPaul Chapman, Encinitas, CA


WATERMAN BY CHOICE... from page 9

Now that we have a definitionfor a type of individual as well asa visual aid to show us several dif-ferent types of activities that takeplace in our operational area, Ilike to make the following request.“Take a good look at that chartand ask yourself just how manythings on that chart you are trulycompetent at doing”. Now beforedoing so, we should ask ourselvesjust what does “competent” mean?Let’s take the item on your piechart that sais “surfing”. If you aretruly competent at surfing then youcould probably have the followingresume with the requisite knowl-edge:- You have ridden waves of all

sizes on all types of boards- You have knowledge of where

waves come from and why theybreak

- You understand the effects oftide, wind, current etc. on thesurf

- You could give some history ofthe sport as well as how that haseffected the way we ride wavesand the equipment we use

This is could go on and on.The point being is that true com-petency does not come easy andmay be a lot more involved thana first glance might dictate.

So now we are ready torelate the above definitions withour visual aid to form a basicconcept of how being a compe-tent waterman applies to ourwork as professional open water

lifesavers. To put it simply; I canguarantee that if you work on theocean for only one summer youwill make rescues and/or med-ical aids. If you work on theocean for several summers, youwill participate in life changingrescues that had both good and

not so good outcomes. And ifyou look at the chart, I can guar-antee that someone was doingone of those activities. In yourwater, these activities are takingplace by individuals who fill abroad spectrum when we look attheir level of competence! Inother words, they may have noneat all.

That is precisely why weshould strive for true competencein as many areas of the chart aswe reasonably can. The trainingyou receive in regards to rescuingvictims and rendering first aid istop notch. However it just isn’tpractical to take all the lifeguards

out sailing is it? There is a verygood chance that at some point inyour job duties, someone whodoesn’t sail so well is going tohave a problem in your water. Thelifeguard will make effective andprofessional semaphore and/orradio communications to get theright resources to assist the sailorin need. However the watermanwho knows boats and how to sailmight just save the whole boatinstead of just the crew.

So to wrap it all up, why notbuild a chart of your own andlook at your development as awaterman and how it relates tolifeguarding? Look at those areasyou might have limited or noexperience at and think aboutdeveloping some new water skillsor enhancing some of the onesyou already have. It’s fun if youlove the ocean, and the best partis that you never stop learning nomatter how much you know. Ihope you found this “food forthought” interesting. Striving tobe the best lifeguards we can be,can sometimes take us to placesbeyond our on-the-job training.For me, it is a very rewardingpursuit. Here’s wishing you thebest in your goals and aspira-tions as a professional lifesaver.You too can take pride in beingable to say;

“Waterman by choice, life-guard by profession”

“Take a goodlook at that chartand ask yourselfjust how manythings on thatchart you are

truly competentat doing”.


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Our towers are made of high quality fiberglass with UV resistant gel coat and utilize all stainless hardware, stairs, and railings. By design they are ideally suited for harsh marine / aquatic environments. They protect lifeguards fromexcessive sun exposure, and provide excellent ventilation to help reduce fatigue. Our newest product, the SurveyorAPEX (patient pending), shown in rear view below is designed to minimize structural exposure in extreme weather conditions when closed. This provides a huge benefit in hurricane prone areas.

We offer three tower models. The Surveyor APEX and Senior are dual lifeguard capacity. The Surveyor Junior isdesigned for a single lifeguard.

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We can provide standard or custom designed lifeguard towers to fit any requirement. Our website has more detailedinformation on all our products, features, and options. Please contact us for quotations, or answers to any questionsyou may have.

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LI F E G U A R D I N G I N LI M AMax Dean Goldstein, L.A. County

On a certain level, the cities of Lima and Los Angelesresemble each other in a few important ways. Both are alarge coastal metropolis composed of an urban sprawldefined on its western edge by the Pacific Ocean shapedinto a smooth bay, and only slightly connected by a cohe-sive public transportation system. Another salient similarity isthe Spanish language, which as any Angelino knows isoften the lingua franca of our city of Angeles. But what LosAngeles and Lima really have in common is their system oflifeguard operations, something I have noticed since Iarrived in Lima and began working with the Peruvian life-guards over two months ago.

My name is Max Dean Goldstein, and I have workedwith the Los Angeles County Fire Department as an OceanLifeguard since the summer of 2003. Upon graduating fromBowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in May of 2009, Iwas awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, granting mea year of international travel based around a project of myown design. The requirements: to remain out of the U.S. foran entire year, to not go anywhere that I’ve previously trav-elled to, and to stay away from countries in the midst ofwarfare. My project: to swim around the world. Awesome:yes. Possibility: infinite.

I left the U.S. on August 2nd, 2009 after another summerworking as a Junior Lifeguard instructor in Santa Monica. Ispent the first three months of my fellowship year betweenSpain and Morocco, training to swim across the Strait ofGibraltar with various swim teams and lifesaving clubs, ulti-mately leaving behind a series of projects that I hope toreturn to in March of 2010. These include swimming and life-saving programs in Morocco, and the goal to assemble aninternational relay of swimmers to cross the Strait ofGibraltar, symbolizing how we can actually swim across aborder that divides us. If you are interested in these projects,please contact me, but for now, let us get back to Peru…

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I arrived in Peru on November 3rd, together withCarlos Alonso Ruiz, a Spanish lifeguard that I met while inSpain. Carlos competes on the international level in oceanlifesaving, and taking advantage of a paid trip to a com-petition in Brazil, he decided to hop across the SouthAmerican continent and spend the next three months withme in Peru.

Arriving in Lima, we found that the Peruvian lifeguardsare managed through the Peruvian National Police, andare first and foremost policemen. Not only do they formthe national police force, however, they are actually thepolice that work in anti-disturbios y control de multitudes-the crowd control and riot police. This is slightly differentthan your typical lifeguard, who tends to spend the offmonths as a student or teacher, and this difference was thebasis of our surprise when we first went to the lifeguardheadquarters in Lima and encountered ourselves in themiddle of a South American police outpost.

When we arrived that first day at LifeguardHeadquarters, we were greeted by armed guards and asecurity check. Things calmed down when Captain HerbertRamos appeared, welcoming us to what he referred to asour new home. He gave us a tour of headquarters, reveal-ing a highly outfitted compound in need of some TLC. Theirhuge stash of boards is at least 15 years old, all of whichhave no side straps and are made of thick waterloggedfoam- more of a hazard in the water than they are a help.

There is one jet ski that works, most of the time, and manymore that don’t have motors. The rescue cans are the sametorpedo shape as the ones we use in L.A. The problem isthat many are made of fiberglass and not plastic, andhave all been repaired in some very creative ways, mak-ing me doubt their practical use. Aside from the armedguards that patrol the compound holding large guns, or theriot police that stroll in for lunch bearing shields, helmetsand batons, the general ambience of the headquarters issimilar to what you would expect: a bunch of lifeguardsmoving in and out of the place, dressed in reds and wear-ing sandals on slightly sandy feet.

Their training academy is extremely challenging and isdesigned to filter out the unfit. Their motto is “Nuestrarazon de ser es la vida de nuestros semejantes” or “Ourreason to be is the life of our fellow brethren”. They inter-pret the physical challenges of their academy as a way todetermine who has the strength and spiritual capacity toput their life on the line for a victim. Given that they beginthe academy in early October, amidst the cold end-of-win-ter-ocean in Lima, the filtering/freezing process isn’t hardto do.

To enter the lifeguard training academy (assuming youare already a member of the police force), you must passa swimming exam that consists of swimming 25m of eachof the four strokes, plus 25m of sidestroke. Once accepted,the rookies begin a long three month academy, whereMonday thru Saturday, from 7am until 6pm, they are at themercy of their instructors. This year, 102 participantsbegan the academy and only 60 finished.

During the first six weeks of the academy they focus onenhancing the swimming skills of the lifeguards, spendinghours each day in the pool and ocean. They are also con-sistently given written exams on lifeguard protocol,oceanography, first aid, and CPR. The instructors are verytough, ordering push-ups and extra swims at the slightestmisbehavior. In order to finish the academy, they must pass

LIFEGUARDING IN LIMA... from page 15

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USLA SPRING NATIONAL MEETING IN GALVESTON, TEXAS


BREWSTER RECEIVES ISHOF’S PARAGON AWARDMichael S. Bartlett, Huntington Beach, CA and Bob Dillon, Belmar, NJ

For his outstanding contribu-tions to Water Safety throughoutthe world, Chris Brewster,President of the United StatesLifesaving Association (USLA),was honored with the “ParagonAward” in the Water SafetyCategory presented by theInternational Swimming Hall ofFame (ISHOF). The ceremonytook place on May 7, 2010, atthe International Swimming Hallof Fame in Fort Lauderdale, FLand included several otherawards at their annual ceremonyand AT&T International DivingGrand Prix.

Chris Brewster began his life-saving career as a lifeguard onthe beaches of San Diego,California in 1979 and has grown over the past thirtyyears to become one of the world’s most influential pro-moters of beach and open water safety. His passion forlifesaving education has caused him to serve in leader-ship capacities on numerous lifesaving and water safetyorganizations including President of United StatesLifesaving Association (USLA), America’s professionalassociation of beach lifeguards charged with reducingthe incidence of death and injury by drowning. ThroughBrewster’s initiatives and planning, the Lifeguard AgencyCertification Program, the Lifeguard Agency Response

Team Program and the USLANational Manual, designed andimplemented to help professionallifeguards be more prepared andeffective.

Chris serves as Vice Presidentof the International LifesavingFederation, the world’s interna-tional organization of lifesaversand as President of the AmericasRegion, where he oversees ILFactivities throughout the westernhemisphere including North,South, and Central America, theCaribbean, and Hawaii. He islifeguard Chief (retired) of theSan Diego Lifeguard Service andHarbor Master with an annualbudget of $10 million with twohundred and forty employees. He

has authored, co-authored or edited over twenty onewritten articles, bills or papers; presented over twentyfour lectures and presentations in seven countries; givenover twenty five media appearances; and attended orpresided over one hundred and thirty meetings, semi-nars, and events around the world.

As author of the “USLA Manual of Open WaterLifesaving”, he has initiated the US NationalCertification Program for Beaches and served as Chairof the National Certification Committee. For more infor-mation on Brewster, please visit www.lifesaver1.com.


Huntington Beach Marine Safety OfficerII Claude Panis (lifeguard rescue boatcaptain on left)was summonedto the scene of aboat fire inH u n t i n g t o nHarbor in April2010 to trans-port fire fightersto the OCSheriffs boat forfire suppression. The 42 foot cabin cruiserexploded and was engulfed with flamesafter starting their engines at a fuel dockand failing to properly ventilate the fuelvapors. The operator and passengerswere treated for injuries and no deathswere reported.

The 42 footcabin cruiserexploded andwas engulfedwith flames


READING THE RIP: SCIENTISTS AND LIFEGUARDS TACKLE KILLER CURRENTS

Michael W. Fincham, Ocean City, MD - Reprinted with permission from the Chesapeake Quarterly

IT'S D-DAY MINUS 1, AND BENDAVIS BEGINS HIS MORNING with a5:45 am workout. Two days earlier itwas an 800 meter run, 30 kettleballswings, and 30 pull-ups, five rounds ofeach. Today it's ten snatches with maxi-mum weight. He's doing Crossfit train-ing, a popular regimen promoted for"forging elite fitness," especially for firstresponders.

Fitness matters for Davis. He's a firstresponder, a crew chief for the life-guards watching the south end of the10-mile sand beach at Ocean City,Maryland. A four-year veteran of theCoast Guard and a nine-year veteran ofthe Ocean City Beach Patrol, Davis hasbrown, sun-streaked hair and a solidbuild he has to keep in shape. At 31years old, he's got to be ready to runfast on wet sand, swim hard throughheavy swells, and haul drowning bodiesoff the bottom of the ocean.

Fitness comes easier for BillyDePaola. He's a wiry, curly-haired firsttimer, fresh from college and four yearsof lacrosse and soccer. For DePaola, D-Day minus 1 begins with lifeguard drillson the beach. He carries injured swim-mers out of the breaking waves. Hepractices sprinting, diving, and swim-ming out through the swells, first with hissmall red buoy, then with a landline,and finally with a long, yellow rescuesurfboard.

It's final exam day for DePaola and

33 other rookies workingwith the Ocean CityBeach Patrol. For them,the beach drills are morefun than work, lettingthem race from one drillstation to the next, thenplunge into the surf, com-pete in teams, pull outpractice victims, and cele-brate with wisecracks andfist bumps. If they pass,they graduate, go off pro-

bation, and get a pay raise. It feels like any last practice before

any big game, but it's also like a wargame of sorts. At each station sergeantsand lieutenants are giving orders.Wherever they go veterans are walkingaround, arms folded, yelling "Keep youreyes on the ocean." Tomorrow is thestart of the three-day July 4th weekend,D-Day for the Beach Patrol. This holidayalways brings a massive invasion ofbeachgoers down to one of the EastCoast's busiest beaches. That meanstens of thousands of people will beplunging into the waves, many of themwith weak swimming skills, and mostwith little understanding of what canhappen when those waves slide backout to sea.

Beachgoers worry about sharks andlightning, but lifeguards worry about ripcurrents. Along most American beaches,they are the big killers. On any shorewith breaking waves, channels of sea-ward-flowing water can suddenly openup and sweep swimmers and wadersout past the breakers into deeper waterswell beyond the beach. For most vic-tims, swimming back against the currentproves futile, leaving them exhaustedand swept further out to sea. Mostdrownings on American beaches are ripcurrent drownings. And ninety percentof the rescues by lifeguards at OceanCity are rip current

rescues. "Rotate! Watch your rotation," barks

a sandy-haired man who's watching thebeach action from beside a white jeep.Butch Arbin, captain of the Beach Patroland a 37-year veteran, set up thesefinal maneuvers and he wants themdone right — all of them. "Station lead-ers," he yells through a loudspeaker,"Keep your people moving."

He wants all his guards, both veter-ans and rookies, ready for D-Day. Heremembers what happened this time lastyear.

TONY DALRYMPLE AND VARJOLANELKO thought they would never find ahotel in Ocean City. This was the fall of2006 and the two scientists weren'tlooking for a room. What they wantedwas a roof with a view. There theywould set up four video cameras thatwould take pictures of the beach everyday of the year. All the hotel managershesitated. They had to check with own-ership and ownership was often a cor-poration located in another town thatsaw little to gain from letting two scien-tists loose on a rooftop. It took dozensof phone calls and treks to 15 hotelsbefore the manager of one hotel, theGrand Stowaway Hotel, said yes. Whatwas the argument that worked? Thecameras, the scientists said, could helpsave lives.

What would save lives, saidDalrymple, would be an accurate fore-cast for dangerous rip currents. TonyDalrymple is lean, laconic, and white-haired, a coastal engineer at JohnsHopkins University who's publishedwidely on wave dynamics and theireffects on coastal structures like beach-es, breakwaters, jetties, and derricks.He's been consulted on tsunamis inThailand, hurricanes in New Orleans,and giant surfing waves in Hawaii. He'salso kept up a long-standing interest in

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On the beach at OceanCity, Maryland lifeguardslike Ben Davis learn toread the waves and whistleswimmers and wadersaway from rip currents.Davis is crew chief down atthe south end of the beachwhere the wooden city piercreates frequent rips bysteering longshore currentsout to sea. Credit: MichaelW. Fincham.


a less-famous subject: rip currents.When a new grad student, VarjolaNelko, arrived from Albania and Turkeyin search of a Ph.D. topic, he gave hera tough one. They would work up anew way of predicting when rip currentsare likely to show up.

How could they sharpen rip currentforecasts using cameras? By capturingactual photos of rip currents as theyformed. Then by correlating those rips inthe photos with weather data aboutwind and waves, the natural forces thatdrive these killer currents. That, at least,was the approach he wanted to try.

Observation, analysis, and predic-tive modeling, that's a classic progres-sion, but it's not the way scientists usual-ly forecast rip currents. Ever since thelate 1980s scientists have focused onrip current rescues, not on actual rip cur-rents observed in action. With their cam-eras, Dalrymple and Nelko were tryingto change the ground rules of the fore-casting game.

HISTORY'S MOST FAMOUS D-DAYWAS the large beach invasion that hap-pened 65 years ago this summer. OnJune 6, 1944, more than 150,000American, British, and Canadian troopswaded ashore through a three-foot surf,launching the Normandy Invasion thatbegan the liberation of Europe andhelped end World War II. One little-known key to the success of that long-ago assault was a top-secret technique,newly invented, that helped forecast thewaves and surf that would be hitting thetarget beaches that day. On one of thebloodiest days of the war, that forecasthelped save lives.

That technique, created by anAustrian named Walter Munk and aNorwegian named Harald Sverdrup, isno longer secret. Its basic claims aboutwind-created waves form the conceptualstarting points for contemporary waveforecasting — and now for rip currentforecasting. A wave, they said, startswith a wind somewhere in the worldscraping along a stretch of ocean. Theycalled that expanse of wind-strokedwater a "fetch," and they theorized that

the size and speed and direction of awave depends on how long and widethe fetch is, how long the wind blowsacross it, and how strong the wind is.Six decades after the NormandyInvasion, any surfer can now go to web-sites like Surfline.com orWaveWatch.com and find an up-to-dateforecast for the wave and surf condi-tions they'll probably see that day whenthey wade out with their boards fromtheir local beach.

At Ocean City the beach patrol getsits wind and wave forecasts from theNational Weather Service, specificallyfrom the Wakefield, Virginia officewhere forecasters work up predictionsusing data from offshore buoys and out-put from the powerful numerical modelsthat form the heart of contemporarywave forecasting. Since the buoys andthe models don't always match, the fore-casters turn to other statistical tools and,finally, to their own judgments. "It's notjust: ‘Here's the model, it's saying this.'And we just go with it," says John Billet,science operations officer at the Center."We make adjustments." The final fore-cast is always made by people.

Standing on the shore at OceanCity, lifeguard captain Butch Arbin cannow find out what kind of swells areheading towards him, even if they're allthe way from a "fetch" near Europe orAfrica. Like most lifeguards, Arbinwatches these wind and wave forecastsclosely, but warily. What he really needsfor his D-Day weekend is a way to turnthose reliable wave forecasts into use-able rip current forecasts.

IN THE 1980S, A METEOROLOGISTin Miami began asking medical examin-ers and beach patrols for reports aboutdrowning deaths and rip current rescuesalong the beaches of southeast Florida.Jim Lushine, a forecaster with theNational Weather Service, collectedthese reports and then looked for corre-lations between rip current rescues andweather conditions. What combinationsof wind and wave conditions matchedup with high rescue days, with moder-ate rescue days, with low rescue days?When lifeguards told him to focus on

wind events, he pulled ten years of windrecords for Miami Beach and found arobust correlation between strongonshore winds and high numbers of ripcurrent rescues. Ebbing tides also corre-lated strongly. Focusing on winds andtides, he built the country's first systemfor forecasting rip current dangers. TheMiami office began issuing daily warn-ings about high risk, moderate risk, andlow risk days.

Long-distance ocean swells, surpris-ingly, got little play in his early predic-tive model for rip currents, apparentlyfor geographic reasons. Long-runningswells that crossed the ocean fromAfrica or Europe and headed towardsFlorida were largely blocked by theshallow waters of the Bahama Islands.Surfers who track big swells call thiseffect the island shadow. Later scientistswho adapted the Lushine scale to otherbeaches gave greater numerical weightto wave heights and to long-periodswells originating in distant locations.The game of mixing and matchingweather factors with rip rescues was on.

And the game continues today. Towork up a rip current prediction forOcean City, John Billet and the otherforecasters at the Wakefield Center usea later version of the system Lushine pio-neered in Florida. They call their toolMALURCS, short for the Mid-AtlanticLushine Rip Current Scale, and in theirversion of Lushine's scale ocean swells— their size, timing, and direction —are hugely important. "They are definite-ly the biggest input," says Billet. Thereare, after all, no nearby islands stand-ing between Ocean City and the otherside of the Atlantic.

The Wakefield forecasters are alsousing another tool: the eyeballs ofOcean City lifeguards. As Ben Davis,the veteran lifeguard, takes his placeatop his chair tower, he scans the oceanin front of him, looking for signs of ripcurrents down near the Ocean City pierand inlet. Up the beach at 120th Street,Billy DePaola, the rookie, does thesame. By 10:00 am more than 90 pairsof eyeballs are reading the ocean, look-

READING THE RIP... from page 27

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ing for rips. Sergeants in charge of eachsection report their reads back to BeachPatrol headquarters, and the dispatcheron duty faxes them to the NationalWeather Service. The rip current threatis forecast as low or moderate or highas calculated by lifeguards — not by aLushine predictive scale. The fax goesout three times every day, and the lastone includes another number: the day'stotal for rip current rescues.

These rip current reads and rescuestats will play a key role, not for today'sforecasts or tomorrow's, but for nextyear's. In the off-season the Wakefieldforecasters will verify their forecasts fromthe past year by comparing themagainst all these reports from the field.With this kind of groundtruthing, theycan adjust their weighting values andsharpen their predictive power for thenext year. It's a kind of off-season tune-up for their forecasting engine.

The result, in theory, should be ripcurrent forecasts that grow more preciseyear by year. The official forecasts, inpractice, seem to be more helpful foroccasional beachgoers as more mediaoutlets every year carry the forecasts. Ifyou're headed for the beach you canturn on the radio or go online and getthe weather forecast. If you're going in

the water, you can also get the rip cur-rent forecast. If it says "moderate risk"of rip currents, you might want to stayon the beach. If it says "high risk," youmight want to stay home.

For now the official forecasts arelargely ignored by Captain Burch Arbinand his lifeguards. When it comes to ripcurrents, they'd rather trust the readingsthey make themselves, watching thewaves from chair towers eight feetabove the beach.

WHEN TONY DALRYMPLE ANDVARJOLA Nelko finally found an OceanCity rooftop for their cameras, theybegan reading the ocean from 14 sto-ries above the boardwalk.

Their high-angle perch in the sky letsthem test a radically different approachto rip current forecasting. Instead of col-lecting records of rip current rescues —as Lushine and his followers have beendoing for two decades — they're collect-ing visual records of the rip currentsthemselves.

Their field work was simple in con-cept: put video cameras on a highrooftop and then photograph the beachand surf zone where rip currents form.The cameras take photographs at 3frames a second for 10 minutes, thenaverage them together and shoot themstraight to Dalrymple and Nelko. Fromthe rooftop cameras to a hotel computerto the internet to a desktop computer, thebeach pictures fly from Ocean City totwo university offices in Baltimore. Muchlike lifeguards sitting on their beachchairs, the scientists can sit in their office,without sunglasses or sunblock, and tryreading the waves for rip currents.

From behind a desk strewn withbooks and assorted spiral-boundreports, Dalrymple swivels his chair andpulls up to a large-screen computeragainst the wall. He taps the keyboard.Here in this long office lined with book-shelves, with a guitar case sitting on thefloor, with a window looking out ontothe green, quiet campus of JohnsHopkins University, we are suddenlyback in Ocean City. We're lookingdown on a beach busy with sunbatherssprawled on blankets and sitting under

umbrellas. Perhaps they're having agood time. Beyond is the surf zone:shallow water, then lines of breakingwaves, then deeper, dangerous waters.Only a few waders are actually in thewater. Perhaps they know what they'redoing. One wishes them well. It's a god-like view from up here in the sky.

A couple more taps and Dalrymplebrings up another image, a freeze-framethat averages together 10 minutes ofpictures. Think of a double exposuremultiplied 1800 times. The image isslightly blurry like an X-ray, and like adoctor advising a patient, Dalrymplebegins diagnosing the big picture. "Allthe breaking is occurring right here," hesays, pointing to a smudged line thatcompresses together hundreds of surfbreaks. Waves break in shallow waters,and that smudged line of breaks tellshim that's where the sandbars are.

"Then the water gets deeper again,"he says, pointing to a dark strip ofwater trapped in a trough between thesandbar and the shore, water that hasto run out to sea again somewhere."Probably a low spot right there," hesays, his finger on a dark gap in thebreaker line. "Not necessarily a rip cur-rent there, but it's more likely to be there


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Eyes in the skies, these cameras watch thebeach from the rooftop at the Grand

Stowaway Hotel at 21st street in Ocean City.They send their photographs over the internet

to desktop computers at Johns HopkinsUniversity, where Robert "Tony" Dalrympleand Varjola Nelko analyze the images for

evidence of how dangerous rip currents form.

To see what these cameras see, go to theirwebsite: http://www.ce.jhu.edu/oceancity/.

Can you pick out the rip currents? Credit: Michael W. Fincham.

Two ways to read therips: from on high,from on the beach.Scientists TonyDalrymple (above, left)and Varjola Nelkowork at Johns HopkinsUniversity using high-angle images from theirrooftop cameras. With funding fromMaryland Sea Grant, they are analyzing howrip currents form and are devising a formulafor accurately forecasting their arrival. Alifeguard (above, right) works from a towerchair along the Ocean City beach using histraining and experience to spot rip currentsand rescue swimmers from their clutches.Credit: Michael W. Fincham.


than anywhere else."None of those tiny humans wading

down there in the surf can hearDalrymple's diagnosis of danger deliv-ered from an office in Baltimore. "Awell-trained lifeguard would know thatthere are likely rips there," saysDalrymple, "but it is really obvious fromhere." One hopes a lifeguard is alert.The view from the 14th floor may begodlike, but it's the vision of a distant,powerless deity.

Accurate forecasts may save lives insome future summers — that's the hopeat least — but there's a whiff of scientif-ic hubris around any project trying topredict natural forces as sporadic as ripcurrents. Following on the success ofwave forecasting, however, scientists atmore than a dozen universities are nowworking with wave-basin studies, currentmeters, pressure gauges, and time-lapsephotography, all in hopes of tracking ripcurrent behavior. Much of that field andlab data are then fed into numericalmodels.

With their cameras and freeze-frame X-rays, Dalrymple and Nelko areamong the first to directly observe ripcurrents in action. By turning their obser-vations into usable data, they are work-ing around the drawback found in allthe earlier forecasts. The Lushine predic-tive scales all focused not on rip currentsbut on rescues. Rescue totals can go upand down for reasons that have nothingto do with rip currents. Rescues can risewhen sunny days or holidays bring outlarge crowds, and they can fall whencloudy skies keep people away. Whennobody's at the beach, rip currents arestill there, churning in the surf.

Why try for a new way to forecastrip currents? Because Dalrymple andNelko tested the forecasting tool now inuse and came up with a failing grade.They took MALURCS, the Mid-AtlanticLushine Rip Current Scale used by theNational Weather Service, and theyasked it a simple test question: Howmany of the actual rip currents theycaught on camera could be predicted bythe Lushine scale? Their answer: For

every 100 actual rip currents, MALURCSpredicted only 40, well below a passinggrade in most schools. A score of 40may be better than nothing, perhaps, butit means the forecasts now used for theMid-Atlantic region are probably failingto predict 60 percent of the rip currentsalong the Ocean City shore.

IT'S NOT GODLIKE, BUT THE VIEWfrom his 8-foot lifeguard tower is highenough for Ben Davis to easily spot aflash rip and quickly whistle at a smallboy who's being tugged gently sea-wards. The boy looks up, then wadesslowly sideways out of the rip channel.That doesn't count as a rescue stat, butit's probably a lifeguard's most commoncatch, spotting a risk before it becomesa rescue event.

He drops the whistle and swivels hishead slowly from north to south, survey-ing his kingdom, the slice of beach thatstretches from the long wooden townpier down to the rockpile jetty at thesouth end of Ocean City. As crew chief,he has dominion here. With several hun-dred people under the watch of hiscrew, he has to catch more than 40 per-cent of the rips.

Like a lot of lifeguards, Davis is alsoan on-site oceanographer, reading thewaves and the wind so he can make hisown instant forecast of rip current dan-gers. Watching swells roll past the endof the pier, he notes their direction, esti-mates their heights, and counts off theseconds between swells.

Reading the rip, like reading music,is a learned skill. The best sign of a rip,for Davis, is color, color that's differentfrom the rest of the water. A rip currentcan be darker because the water isdeeper where it flows through a chan-nel. Or it can be lighter, especially with"flash rips," because they pick up sandfrom the bottom and carry it seaward."It can be very deceptive," warns Davis.A rip current, ironically enough, canlook like a safe patch of water. As acurrent surges out, it can knock downthe surf break, creating calm-lookingwater that draws in timid waders whodon't want to battle breaking waves.

Lifeguards up on their tower chairs

are not gods, but they're not powerlesseither. When a rip opens up and it's toolate to whistle people away, they haveoptions, primarily speed, teamwork, andtraining. A guard signals the next tower,then hits the sand running. "You justhead there," says Davis. Next comes in-the-water triage. "You start getting peo-ple out of the shallows. If they arealready in over their heads, you tellthem how to swim out." If they can'tswim, then the guards go after them.

That could mean battling throughthe breakers with a rescue buoy toreach swimmers in panic. Or boundinginto the breakers with a surfer-style res-cue board, perhaps the fastest way toreach a failing swimmer. Or swimmingout a lifeline so lifeguards on the beachcan haul exhausted swimmers backthrough the surf.

Last year about this time, they hadto use all their tools. As the annual July4th invasion hit Ocean City beaches, atropical storm began forming some3,000 miles away, starting wave trainsheading this way from the west hump ofAfrica. By July 7, the storm, now a hurri-cane called Bertha, was hanging welleast and south of Bermuda — and stillsending wave trains headed west. Thestorm never came near Ocean City,hanging out past Bermuda for nearly aweek. But its long-period waves begancoming ashore by July 9. For the nextweek, a week of mostly sunny days, ripchannels were opening up all along thebeach, and lifeguards were scramblingto pull out all their lifesaving gear. TheOcean City Beach Patrol, according toCaptain Butch Arbin, set its all-timerecord. In one seven-day period, life-guards rescued over 2,000 people fromkiller-size rip currents. While three peo-ple drowned along the New Jerseycoast, nobody drowned on the beachesat Ocean City.

HUGE STORMS LIKE BERTHA, ITTURNS out, can play a surprising role inthe dynamics of rip currents at OceanCity. With freeze-frame images fromtheir cameras in the sky, Dalrymple andNelko are able to watch how sandbars


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are born and track where they go todie. And it's the life cycles of sandbarsthat largely control the setup and spac-ing of rip current channels.

The world of rips, according toDalrymple, begins with a flat beach anda big storm that tears sand off the shoreand carries it seaward. The sand nevergets very far because the outgoingwater runs into other incoming wavesand simply drops its load. And voila!New sandbars are born.

The beach is now "set up" to formrip channels. When backwashing sea-water can no longer run out over thesandbar, on ebbing tides for example, itthen goes looking for another exit.Wherever there's a notch in a sandbaror a low spot along the beach, back-washing water will begin wedging itsway through. A notch becomes a chan-nel, and a rip current runs through it,pulsing most strongly after the arrival oflarge wave sets.

In the weeks after the storm, thosesandbars, as seen in their photos, startcreeping shorewards, pushed backtowards the beach by incoming waves.During the pushback, sandbars move atdifferent rates, and new rip channelsappear among them, flashing open inunexpected places. "The beach getsvery wriggly," says Dalrymple. Barringanother big storm, the sandbars willeventually reattach to the beach. Thebeach will flatten out again and stabi-lize. Rip currents will dwindle.

Creatures of winds and waves, ripcurrents are also, it's now clear, creaturesof bathymetry. For scientists with theirfreeze-frames, reading the rips nowmeans reading the bottom also: seeingthe setup, charting the rip channels, track-ing the slow, wriggly trek towards shore.For lifeguards without X-rays of the bot-tom, reading the rips just got more com-plicated. Now they need to keep aweather eye out for how rip channels canchange during a storm cycle.

AT 5:30 BEN DAVIS STANDS UP onhis chair, blows his whistle, and beginswaving swimmers out of the water. Andso do 91 other lifeguards along the 10-

mile beach. It's closing time and Daviswraps up his American flag, climbsdown, and begins packing up his gear.

For his last chore he tilts his tallchair tower over his back, all 300pounds of it, and drags it thirty yardsback through the soft sand and lays iton its side. It's pure grunt work andevery guard does it every day.

The ocean empties, but the beachdoesn't. And ten minutes later severalswimmers begin wading back into thesurf.

SO WHAT'S THE FORECAST FROMTHE 14TH FLOOR?

When Dalrymple and Nelko builttheir new predictive system, they tooktheir real-life rip currents as captured bytheir cameras and looked at each of theweather forces in play that day. In uni-versity research like this most of the gruntwork falls to grad students like Nelko.First she plotted rip currents againstwave heights, the best measure of howenergy is hitting the beach. Then she didthe same thing with wave period, whichgives an estimate of speed. Then withwave direction. Then with wind speedand wind direction. That's an ocean ofdata she had to swim through.

When they tested their new system,they got a nice number. Their forecastpredicted 72 out of 100 actual rip cur-rents. Seventy-two percent is a big jumpover 40 percent, the best the officialforecasts could do with the same rips.That sounds like a passing grade inmost schools, but it's not good enoughat Hopkins, not yet. Nelko still has moredata to wade through.

The scientists want to raise theirPOD, their Probability of Detection, andlower their FAR, their False Alarm Ratio.Their forecast unfortunately also predict-ed rip currents when there were none, aprospect that might keep people athome on perfectly safe beach days. "Ifpeople don't go to the beach," saysNelko "then you have a lot of merchantswho are not selling saltwater taffy. It haseconomic consequences." If everybodystays home, then nobody's selling muchof anything, not T-shirts or hot dogs orhotel rooms with a high-angle view of

the ocean. IT COULD HAVE BEEN AN EVENING

like this. The chair towers are down, theguards are gone, and the slanting sun islighting the ocean with a brilliant, celes-tial blue. The two boys who went swim-ming that evening stayed down at thesouth end of the beach where their par-ents could watch them from the shore.From there the father was able to watchas the rip current carried both the boys,now shouting, out past the jetty. And themother was able to watch as the father,now swimming, went out in the glowingsea to save his sons.

It was a passing boat that pulled theboys to safety. And it was an off-dutylifeguard who found the father's body.They call the work "search and recov-ery," and lifeguards practice this drillalso. It was Butch Arbin, captain of theBeach Patrol, who sat on the beach witha sobbing mother holding a two-year-old, now fatherless baby.

"Our guards don't remember everyperson they've saved. I don't rememberhow many people I've rescued," hesays. "I just don't remember." But theyclearly remember the ones they couldn'tsave. Around the country, most rip cur-rent drownings happen much like thisone at Ocean City. No lifeguards intheir chairs. No cameras in the sky.

And here's where new forecastscould save lives, even when lifeguardscan't. For the foreseeable future, life-guards will probably remain their ownrip current forecasters, relying on theirwell-earned skills at reading the wavesin front of them.

But for the rest of us who may bedriving to the beach or standing on thesand trying to read the waves, goodforecasts count. We heard the weatherforecast before we left the house andwe trusted it enough to get in the carand head out.

It's here perhaps, on beaches emptyof lifeguards, that good rip current fore-casts would matter the most, helping usdecide whether to go home, rest on thebeach, or go for a plunge in the unpre-dictable waves.



a comprehensive written exam and complete a 6km oceanswim. If they succeed, they joyfully strip their riot gear andsport their lifeguard reds for the summer. It’s as if theyimmediately take on the internationally common lifeguardpersonality: people who recognize and enjoy that their offi-cial work uniform is beach attire.

Not only will these lifeguards work the beaches of thebay of Lima, which is slightly smaller than Santa MonicaBay in Los Angeles, but they will also cover the beaches150km north and south of the city. Around 700 lifeguardswill patrol these Pacific waters and make an average of2,200 rescues during the summer months. The Peruviancoast is known for its large surf, and from what I under-stand, most of these rescues are not of the preventativetype, but of the near drowning type.

The lifeguards in Lima have a very established pro-gram, with the three month long training academy as theprime example of how seriously they take their lifesaving.They lack equipment and need new rescue boards and res-cue cans. Their fiberglass rescue cans break easily and area hazard in the surf line, and their rescue boards areessentially useless. Neither do they have any medicalequipment, and most importantly could use an AED ateach of the most visited beaches. Many lifeguards haveshared stories with me of failed CPR attempts on cardiacarrest victims as they waited for the ambulance to arrive.What is really needed, however, is to increase the level ofswimming within the lifeguards, because even after the firstsix weeks of the training academy, it is their dedication tothe lives of their brethren that enables them to rescue vic-tims, and not their strength in swimming.

A simple response to this dilemma would be to callupon the surfing and swimming communities in Peru andattract them to work as lifeguards. The problem here is thatthe surfers and good swimmers are both groups composedof more wealthy citizens, and given that Peruvian National

Police, and therefore lifeguards, earn an average of only$350 a month, the more aquatically talented/wealthy citi-zens are not very likely to take on a job as a lifeguard.

I believe that the real solution is to start a JuniorLifeguard program, recruiting children of the police for asummer program of ocean lifesaving and open waterswimming. There are already many examples of thispolice/lifeguard family legacy in Peru, but having complet-ed a few summers of the Jr. Lifeguard program, the newgeneration will be much more aquatically fit and thus pre-pared for the lifeguard academy. Incorporating a JuniorLifeguard program into their equation will raise the level ofswimming and lifesaving within Peru.

And this is what we are currently doing; organizing aJunior Lifeguard program through the LifeguardHeadquarters of the Peruvian National Police. Theyalready have a calendar of summer youth programs,including a swimming academy, and we are simplyadding a new dimension to this social service. We plan tobegin on January 4th with 30 kids, ages 12-17, and fore-see this summer as creating the foundation for the future ofa Junior Lifeguard program in Peru. Everybody is excitedabout it; the captains and chiefs have already enrolledtheir children, and we’ve even been interviewed on nation-al television on a few separate occasions.

The only problem is that we have very little equipment.C.S.L.A was kind enough to donate $300, which we planon using to purchase rescue cans and uniforms, and asidefrom a few of those old rescue boards or any rescue cansthat get left behind at headquarters, we’ll have to make dowith the ocean and the sand (which is bountiful).

If you are interested in finding out more about theseprojects, in Peru, Spain or Morocco, please contact me viaemail at [email protected]. You can alsoaccess my photos and travel blog via: swimaroundthe-world.blogspot.com

We are specifically looking for material donations forthe Peruvian lifeguards, and monetary or material dona-tions for the Peruvian Junior Lifeguard program.

LIFEGUARDING IN LIMA... from page 17


NEW JERSEY LIFEGUARD JOINS THE COAST GUARDBob Dillon, Belmar, NJ

Lauren Pfeiffer, of theMonmouth County, NewJersey Chapter, graduatedwith honors from the USCoast Guard RecruitTraining Command Centerin Cape May, NJ inNovember 2009. She wasfirst in her company receiv-ing the “Honor GraduateAward” as well as receivingthe “Seamanship Award”.She finished second for the“Recruit Physical FitnessAward” having been beatonly by a male recruit!

As a veteran guard,Pfeiffer has been competing and placing in the USLANationals the last two years of her surf lifesaving participa-tion. She has been a lifeguard at the Sea Girt Beach, NJ andcompetes in both local tournaments, as well as in the Mid-Atlantic Regional Competitions as an avid competitor.

Pfeiffer was a record holder in swimming competitionsboth in high school and in college. In addition to surf lifesav-ing competitions, she has competed in several tri-athelons.With these accomplishments, her options would include

becoming a Rescue Swimmer (as in “The Guardian”).Currently, Pfeiffer is stationed aboard a USCG cutter inPortsmouth, VA. It is nice to have options!

Graduation with a Bachelor’s Degree in Criminal Justicefrom the College of New Jersey, she has expressed an interestin pursuing the Officer Candidate School while in the CoastGuard. She is interest-ed specifically in thelaw enforcement areaof the Coast Guardsince her long termgoal is to become aNJ State Trooper.

After serving hercountry in the CoastGuard, her status as aveteran with lawenforcement experi-ence should certainlyenhance her chancesof achieving herdream as a StateTrooper.

Good luck to Lauren in her pursuit of serving her countryand may she always remember the USLA motto “LifeguardsFor Life”!

WOMAN IS THE YOUNGEST TO CROSS AN OCEAN ALONEChristopher Maag, Reprinted with permission, AP in Feb. 2010

Katie Spotz completed her missionrecently, becoming the youngest person torow an entire ocean solo, and the firstAmerican to row a boat without help frommainland to mainland. After 70 days 5hours 22 minutes in the Atlantic, Spotz,22, arrived in Georgetown, Guyana, inSouth America.

“You’re in a situation that you can’tescape, so you really have to dig deep,”said Spotz, who left Jan. 3 from Dakar,Senegal, on the west coast of Africa.

Her 2,817-mile journey raised morethan $70,000 for the Blue Planet RunFoundation, which finances drinking waterprojects around the world.

The trip could have ended eight daysago. But as Spotz approached Cayenne,French Guiana, the wind and currentsgrew so strong that she would have need-

ed a tow for the last few miles, said SamWilliams, who rowed the Atlantic in 2008and communicated with Spotz via satellitephone during the trip

Determined to make the entire cross-ing under her own power, Spotz kept row-ing to Georgetown, 400 miles to thenortheast, where currents are milder.

“I’m just impressed by the way she’sgot on and done it,” Williams said. “She’shad such little drama. Most people wouldbe scared out of their minds.”

Spotz had packed enough food to last110 days: half a million calories’ worth ofmostly freeze-dried meals, granola anddried fruit. Her crossing took much lesstime because she had help from the tradecurrents, and was fortunate not to faceany major weather or technical problems.

Her 19-foot yellow wooden rowboat

was broadsided by 20-foot waves as sheapproached South America. It was afrightening ride, even though the boat wasbuilt to withstand hurricanes and 50-footwaves, said Phil Morrison, the Britishyacht builder who designed it.

Spotz said in a telephone interviewafter the trip, “I was worried the boatmight capsize.”

Early in the trip, Spotz broke thecable that allowed her to steer with herfoot as she rowed, forcing her to use acumbersome hand steering system. A daybefore landfall, Spotz smelled smoke. HerGPS tracker, which she used to update herposition on her blog, was on fire. Spotzextinguished it. Her GPS device for navi-gation was not affected.

to page 34...

Most important, the boat’s solar pan-els, batteries, water desalination machineand the iPod she used to play audiobooks on Zen meditation remained func-tional.

Her equipment was a vast improve-ment over that of the first ocean rowers,the Norwegian immigrants George Harboand Gabriel Samuelson, who traveledfrom New York to France in 1896 in anopen boat.

“I wouldn’t go on a trip like this with-out all the safety gear and technology Ihad,” Spotz said.

Even so, the voyage remained a gru-eling test of endurance. Spotz developedpainful calluses and rashes from rowing 8to 10 hours a day.

Spotz could have cooled herself atnight by opening the two hatches of herwatertight sleeping cabin, but doing sowould have made her vulnerable to largewaves. So she kept both hatches closed.

As she slept, her boat bobbed errati-cally in the waves. To keep from beingthrown around the cabin, Spotz usedclothes and gear to wedge herself on athin foam mattress. The padding helped,

but not much. “Sleeping was a real prob-

lem,” Spotz said. “It took a tollto put out that much physical effort on verylittle rest.”

Spotz grew up in Mentor, Ohio, asuburb of Cleveland. Her career as anendurance athlete began when she ranher first marathon at age 18. Later shecycled across the United States andbecame the first person to swim the lengthof the Allegheny River.

Before leaving for Senegal, her biggestboating experience consisted of a 40-milepractice row on Lake Erie that ended withher boat being pinned against a cliff bywind and waves. The boat was nearlydestroyed. Many people asked Spotz howshe could row across the Atlantic if shecould not even row on Lake Erie.

The answer, she said, is that thebiggest danger in ocean rowing besideshurricanes is coming too close to shore,where the current can overwhelm therower and push the boat into the rocks.

“The last day of the trip is always themost dangerous,” Williams said.

Landing safely is a major accomplish-ment in the sport of ocean rowing. In thelast decade, 110 rowboats have success-

fully crossed an ocean, according to theOcean Rowing Society. Nearly as manyrowboat crews, 102, tried and failed.One American, Nenad Belic, attempted torow solo across the Atlantic in 2001. Hewas lost at sea.

It took Spotz two years to plan the tripand to raise $100,000 to pay for it.Spotz’s parents tried to persuade her notto try such a dangerous adventure.

“Are you nuts?” Dan Spotz, herfather, said when she told him about herplan. “When she rode a bike across theentire country, she didn’t have to worryabout sharks or pirates.”

Spotz did see sharks. She wassplashed by dolphins as big as her boat.Fish leapt and slapped her in the face,and exhausted birds nestled beside her asshe rowed.

Rather than thinking about how farshe had traveled or how many miles shehad left, she tried to notice her surround-ings.

“For this journey I really couldn’t thinkthat far in advance because otherwise itwould be overwhelming,” Spotz said. “Itallowed me to focus on what was happen-ing in that moment.”


USLA’S CA R L MA RT I N E Z RE C O G N I Z E D F O R H I SDE D I C AT E D SE RV I C E

Bob Dillon, Belmar, NJ

Long-time USLA member CarlMartinez of the National Park Service inSandy Hook, New Jersey, was recog-nized for his many years of dedicatedservice to promoting women lifeguards.He was presented with a plaque byDenise Blair of the Monmouth CountyMid-Atlantic Region at last year’s 25thAnniversary of the “All Women LifeguardCompetition” on behalf of both the USLAand all the women lifeguards who haveparticipated during these past 25 yearsof competition.

The All Women LifeguardCompetition is sponsored by theNational Park Service and was initiallyheld at the Jacob Riss Park, New YorkUnit of the Gateway National RecreationArea (NY/NJ). For the last five years,the All Women’s Competition was held

at the Sandy Hook, NJ unit of GNRA.Martinez not only initiated this event 25

years ago to recognize women life-guards, but has been at the helm of thiscompetition ever since which is held thelast Wednesday in July.

The inscription on the plaque waswritten by Bill Richardson, past USLAPresident and retired lifeguard chief ofHuntington Beach. It reads:

“In recognition of four decades ofdedicated and faithful service to theOpen Water Lifesaving Community andspecifically for the development, promo-tion and operation of the NPS All-Women Lifeguard Tournament which iscelebrating it’s 25th year of operation in2009. Carl is honored for his gentlespirit, his kind and generous heart andhis leadership qualities. Thank you forserving so long and so well!”

WOMAN IS THE YOUNGEST... from page 33

spring 2010 - vol. 26, no. 3...spring 2010 - vol. 26, no. 3 2 american lifeguard magazine, spring...

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