the other press

Centre, which is celebrating it’s tenth
birthday this year, only four clients have
been unconscious and submerged. That
might seem like a lot, but only one per-
cent of all drownings in Canada occur in
supervised swimming areas. Of those four
submerged swimmers that were per-
formed by lifeguard staff, all recovered
and are leading healthy lives today
because the lifeguard staff responded
quickly. According to the Lifesaving
Society, the majority of people who drown
each year in BC and the Yukon are males
between the ages of 17 and 35, werent
wearing personal flotation devices, and
alcohol was usually involved.

There have been fatalities, but these are
few and far between, and (at least at
Eileen Dailly) have been people who were
older and had some severe medical condi-
tion: heart attack, stroke, and even one
liver failure. Most of the time, the types of
emergencies lifeguards respond to are
bleeding noses, cut feet, and bumped
heads.

After years of lifeguarding, I’ve collected
a series of pool stories. After dealing with
some of the things lifeguards encounter at
the pool, such as cleaning up human bod-
ily waste and dealing with medical emer-
gencies, a certain level of black humour is
developed—mostly as a coping strategy.

I once watched an instructor jump into
the pool, and then jump out almost
immediately after entering the water. Her
face had turned several, varying shades of
green, and she was pointing hysterically at
three huge logs of human excrement that
were floating ominously in her corner of
the pool. “Hey, we have bathrooms in this
facility lady,” we would say to her for

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weeks after. “You didn’t have to do your
business in the pool.”

On another occasion, a patron was
spotted by a lifeguard sitting in the hot
tub massaging himself in an area of his
body that is best left to private quarters.
The lifeguard who noticed the inappro-
priate behaviour signalled the supervisor
who immediately turned off the hot tub
jets making the water crystal clear. The
supervisor then proceeded to carry a note
over to the patron that read: “Sorry, please
don't pitch your tent here.”

I once worked with a supervisor who
was a very direct communicator. During
one family swim at the pool, a couple was
becoming overly amorous. The supervisor
used the public announcement system,
and broadcast the following message: “We
would like to take this opportunity to
remind all patrons that family swim is for
people who have families, not for people
conceiving families.”

Lifeguarding is international and in
many parts of the world, for example, in
Australia, lifeguards aren't paid. It’s a vol-
unteer service, and the lifeguards work
two-week tours of duty on the beaches
throughout the summer months. There
are also several beaches supervised by vol-
unteer lifeguards in the US, and England.
In contrast lifeguarding in the US can also
mean big business. In fact, it was a Los
Angeles County lifeguard, Greg Bonnan,
that had the original idea for a television
show about lifeguarding—an idea that
evolved into the hit series Baywatch.
Bonnan also worked with Jeff Ellis, who
owns one of the largest lifeguard training
companies in the US, Jeff Ellis &
Associates Inc. who claim to train 35,000

lifeguards across the US each year.

While I was in Taiwan, studying
Mandarin and living with my fiancee’s
family, I realized for the first time exactly
how lifeguarding is a universal profession.
Lifeguards from around the world all have
the same goals and principles about teach-
ing people about water safety, preventing
injury where possible, and responding
with critical interventions, (such as artifi-
cial respiration or cardio-pulmonary
resuscitation) if needed. What changes
from place to place is how this is achieved.

I spent time with a few Taiwanese life-
guards who | met through a friend. They
took me up to spend a few weekends
guarding at one of the many beaches that
stretch across Taiwan's northern coast. I
have mostly been a pool lifeguard, and
watching the surf roll up and down the
beach as I stared out into the South
Pacific, I felt very small, and wondered
how any rescues could be performed in
such a large and powerful body of water.

People are only about ten percent as
effective when swimming in a large body
of water when compared to a swimming
pool—in terms of distance, that means if
a person can swim | km in a swimming
pool, they can only swim about 100 m
before starting to tire when swimming in
a large lake or ocean. I did spend a lot of
time swimming in the ocean while in
Taiwan, and found that when I returned
to swimming in a pool, I had become
much stronger in the water.

While guarding on the beaches in
Taiwan, I was also able to see my first jel-
lyfish sting. One of the junior lifeguards,
who had been out training, had been
stung across the back of his right shoulder

fipril 9, 2003

oe

 

Photos by Sven Bellamy

and down half his back. The skin around
the area of the sting was red and welted,
and the young guard winced every time
someone would get close to the stung
area. Long opaque strands of tentacle
could be seen clinging to the skin.

The head lifeguard on duty peed into a
cup and poured the urine over the area
that was stung. “Look the other way,” he
said to the young lifeguard. “This might
smell bad.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t
enough urine, so the next lifeguard on
duty had a turn, peeing and pouring, and
then the next, and next, until we had all
given new meaning to the phrase: piss on
you.

Urine contains uric acid, which fixes the
stinging cells (nematocysts) that are on
the jellyfish tentacles, preventing the toxin
from being released. Other home reme-
dies include vinegar, or meat tenderizer
that contains papain as an active ingredi-
ent. Papain, which is derived from papaya
or pineapple breaks down the toxin pro-
duced by jellyfish stinging cells—it’s too
bad we didn’t have any alternate home
remedies at the beach that day.

It might be difficult to tell from watch-
ing a lifeguard on duty that the job offers
such a wide exposure to people and expe-
riences. Perhaps it’s Baywatch, and all the
show’s melodrama that carries this mes-
sage. But next time youre at the pool, and
you spot the lifeguard doing what they do,
remember they probably have many faces.
Remember that still waters run deep.

 

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