Latest lifeguard Stories
South Florida beaches are displaying warnings for swimmers about rip currents and jellyfish in the surf after deadly Memorial Day incidents, officials said. Over the weekend lifeguards had to rescue at least six people from rough water at Crandon and Haulover beaches, Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesman Lt. Elkin Sierra told The Miami Herald on Tuesday. Similarly, in Volusia County at least 150 people had to be pulled out of currents along the beach. A riptide apparently pulled a 15-year-old...
By Jessica Foster, The Sun News, Myrtle Beach, S.C. Sep. 3--As vacationers flocked to the beach Sunday during the last major tourist weekend of the summer, lifeguards kept a close watch for rip currents in the choppy waters along the coast. August and September are peak months for rip-current drownings and rescues because of storms associated with hurricane season and the high number of people on the beach, meteorologists say. Wes Cox, manager of Lack's Beach Service lifeguards in Myrtle...
By Susan Silvers, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport Jul. 13--TRUMBULL -- In his brief career as a lifeguard, Cody Hutchinson has seen plenty of kids bob up and down in the water, holding their breath for a time as they go under. So when the 15-year-old noticed a young girl in the pool at Beach Memorial Park about 5:25 p.m. Wednesday, he was not overly concerned at first. But when the dark-haired youngster clad in a yellow swimsuit decorated with roses sank to the bottom in about 7 feet of...
By David Richie, The Sacramento Bee, Calif. Jul. 5--State parks officials confirmed today that two people drowned Wednesday during separate incidents at Folsom Lake. The victims were identified as Kalen McCoy, 20, Roseville, and Thomas Le, 16, Elk Grove, by the Placer County Coroner's Office. "It was a very, very busy day," said Michael Gross, superintendent of the Folsom Lake State Recreation Area. "We went to closure at 11 a.m. on all of our day use areas." The first drowning occurred...
By Max B. Baker, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Texas May 10--Burger's Lake, Fort Worth's popular private swimming hole, is being sued by the family of a 39-year-old man who drowned there two years ago. Described as a "healthy, experienced swimmer," Phillip Flores was swimming with his brother and a friend in July 2005 when he "exhibited distress and then slipped below the surface," the lawsuit states. Flores' family contends that Burger's Lake did not have enough policies, practices and...
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - A South African lifeguard had his foot bitten "clean off" when a shark attacked him during a training exercise off a beach near Cape Town, officials said. Achmat Hassiem, 24, and his brother and fellow lifeguard Taariq, 17, were in the water off False Bay on Sunday when Achmat spotted a shark and yelled to his brother to get into a nearby boat. "I got in the boat. The shark turned and went straight for my brother," Taariq told the SAPA news agency. "I stuck my...
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A woman sunbathing on a southern California beach was accidentally run over and killed by a police vehicle on routine beach patrol, police said on Tuesday. Cindy Conolly, 49, who was visiting Oxnard, about 50 miles north-west of Los Angeles, from Iowa for the wedding of her son, was sunbathing alone on Monday on the beach near her hotel just below a two-foot (70-cm) high ridge of sand. Police said that two officers in a sports utility vehicle stopped on top of...
By Michael PerrySYDNEY -- Australia's summer -- if you can survive it, you'll love it.Australia has plenty of blue sky, a scorching sun and golden beaches washed by cooling waves. It also has a multitude of creatures that can kill you, and they all come out to play in the summer.Only one week into summer and hundreds of swimmers were chased from the surf at Bondi Beach by an unusually large shark, possibly an aggressive tiger shark or bronze whaler.Bondi Beach lifeguard Rod Kerr,who has...
By Marty GrahamSAN DIEGO (Reuters) - Some of the biggest surf since the El Nino winter of 1997 pounded the Southern California coast this week, damaging piers, forcing beach closures and overwhelming even the most experienced surfers.Driven by a Pacific storm near Hawaii, sets of waves up to 20 feet tall on Wednesday swept San Diego-area beaches, where lifeguards on jet skis pulled more than 100 struggling surfers out of danger on the first day of winter."There's a lot of machismo in...
By James ReganSYDNEY (Reuters) - Disagreements, sometimes violent, about who owns the beach in Australia are not new.Long before this month's ethnic riots in some of Sydney's most popular seaside communities, surfers, lifeguards and people who live inland were drawing battle lines in the sand."When you are sharing the ocean with like-minded people, the beach becomes like your church," said psychologist Richard Bennett, author of "The Surfer's Mind.""If someone is...
