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08/28/2019 07:00 AMOn a sunny Monday at the beginning of August, West Beach at Hammonasset Beach State Park was packed with more than 100 beach goers, with swimmers wading in and out of the water.
Lifeguard Joe Cartier was on duty on Chair 8 at West Beach, the busiest beach for swimmers at the park, with one of his fellow lifeguards, Reed Beretsky. About 10 minutes into their 20-minute rotation on Chair 8 that Monday, they saw three people start swimming out to a boat anchored nearby.
As Cartier and Beretsky scanned the beach and all of the swimmers, they saw that two of the group of three swimmers made it to the boat.
They focused in on the third swimmer in that group, a young boy, who was about halfway to the boat. He suddenly stopped, turned around, and tried to swim back in towards shore.
The young boy, about 150 feet offshore, was now swimming against the current and was hit in the face by a wave. Seconds later, the young boy, no longer making any progress towards the shore, started to bob up and down.
The lifeguards knew they had about 20 to 60 seconds, the amount of time it usually takes for a swimmer in distress to go under.
Cartier radioed in to his supervisor: “Chair 8. Jump chair. Chair 8,” activating both backup from the Hammo lifeguard team and a call to Madison EMS and police.
By the time Cartier jumped chair and his feet hit the sand, there was no time left to think. His adrenaline, fueled by his training and a kind of muscle memory from hours and hours of drills, took over. He grabbed a rescue board, ran to the water, dove in, and started to swim, keeping his eyes on the boy, with Beretsky right behind him.
Incidents Up, Exponentially
Cartier, 16, of Guilford, and Beretsky, 21, of Madison are two of 29 lifeguards working this summer at Hammonasset, Connecticut’s largest shoreline park with more than two miles of beach. The teens and young adults help guard the lives of millions of people who come to Hammo to enjoy Long Island Sound, people who might be a neighbor from a shoreline town or who might be a visitor from another country who speaks another language.
These visitors to Hammonasset go in the water, some wearing swimsuits and others wearing T-shirts and shorts and even shoes. Some are strong swimmers, others put their faith in flimsy inner tubes and swim noodles. Some parents are wide awake and vigilant and never more than an arm’s length away from their children. Other parents, drowsy from the humidity, and heat, and perhaps from the sheer exhaustion that can come with being a parent, are awake one minute and dozing off the next while a child, absorbed with an army of tiny, plastic toy soldiers in the sand one minute and bored the next minute, toddles off towards the water.
The park is full of people like that, having fun and relaxing one minute. Then, suddenly, somebody needs to be saved.
That’s why, in addition to lifeguard training, the Hammonasset lifeguards also get waterfront training, says Matt Robbins, 20, of North Branford, a lifeguard supervisor at Hammonasset.
“That teaches us now to use a rescue board and kayak, for example,” he says. “And also how to deal with underwater obstacles.”
He notes Hammo has a rocky jetty that is fun to explore and can result in sprains and cuts, which is when the lifeguards’ bloodborne pathogen training comes in handy.
Sometimes, if someone is pulled from the water and is no longer breathing, the lifeguards have to administer emergency oxygen until the other first responders arrive, Robbins says, so there is training for that. Lifeguards are trained to help people administer their own asthma inhalers or epinephrine injectors, he says.
Sarah Battistini, the state Department of Energy & Environmental Protection water safety coordinator for all of the state parks, helps hire and train the lifeguards and has recently rebuilt the Hammonasset lifeguard crew to 29, from 10 several seasons ago.
She has a favorite saying, often cited by legendary Utah State Park Ranger Brody Young, who was shot nine times while on duty, and managed to fight back and survive: “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”
Her goal is to train and then continually drill her lifeguards so their response to an emergency is appropriate and immediate. A typical summer for a state park lifeguard on her staff will include the Trident Games, in which lifeguards from different Connecticut parks compete against each other, testing those skills, along with drill after drill after drill after drill the whole season.
Sometimes these drills involve having volunteers go out and pretend to get in trouble, something the guards don’t know until after they’ve pulled the person from the water. She says at Hammonasset, this year, they didn’t have to run as many of those mock drills as usual, because there have been more real incidents than usual. In fact, incidents at all of the parks are up, she says, exponentially.
Swept Away
The first incident at Hammonasset occurred shortly after the start of the summer, just after Memorial Day. A small child went face down in the water and, just out of sight of the parents, did not come up. Lifeguard Kyle Twohill made the save, says Battistini.
The second incident was on the July Fourth weekend, a weekend so busy that people had to be turned away from Hammonasset. On Wednesday, July 3 around 1 p.m., according to news reports, a 71-year-old Wethersfield man swimming just outside of the swim zone went under and did not come back up. He was pulled from the water by good Samaritans and lifeguards who performed CPR until Madison EMS arrived and took over, according to news reports. The man, John Czepiel, was transported to a nearby medical center, where he was pronounced dead just after 1:30 p.m. The news report in the New Haven Register said officials delayed reporting the incident to the public, due to difficulties in tracking down the man’s next of kin.
Battistini declined to comment on that incident, which is still under investigation.
Then, on Aug. 5, came the incident with the boy trying to swim out to the boat.
Less than 30 seconds after he left the chair, Cartier made it to the 13-year-old and started talking with him to calm him down, he says. The boy grabbed onto the board and tried to answer but was coughing up water. Cartier, keeping his voice calm, kept talking with him.
Beretsky was right behind Cartier, and, just behind Beretsky was lifeguard Tim O’Brien, 24, also of Madison. The three of them got the boy fully on the board. With O’Brien on the board with the boy, and Cartier and Beretsky swimming alongside, the four made their way to shore, where Madison EMS and police were waiting for them.
The boy, after being checked out, was reunited with his family. Cartier got a break, a little time to talk with the other lifeguards, and a drink of water. Then he hopped back into the chair.
Less than a week later, on Aug. 11, Alec Dube, 18, of Madison was in Chair 9 guarding West Beach. The waves were higher than usual and among the swimmers was a man about 30 to 40 feet offshore, just outside the swim zone. Dube saw he was struggling to keep his head above water. It looked like the man was having trouble getting air.
Dube went in with a rescue tube and did a rear-facing rescue, pulling the man to shore with the man facing away from him.
“He was pretty exhausted when I first got to him. He couldn’t say anything,” Dube says.
Once they got to shore, and the man had a moment to rest, he was able to talk, and he told Dube he was trying to stand but, because of the waves and the strong current, he was swept away, and he could not keep his balance.
Dube and the other lifeguards on the scene walked him back to where he had been sitting, and waited with him until the ambulance crew arrived to check him out.
Just Doing Their Job
If you ask Dube or Cartier about the saves, they’ll talk about it with accounts that are concise and to the point, typical of the “I-was-just-doing-my-job” mentality characteristic of many first responders.
It’s fair to say, however, that their colleagues and their supervisors could not be more proud of their work, and the broken hearts averted had those incidents gone in the other direction.
O’Brien, who helped respond on Cartier’s save, works the state park lifeguard’s social media accounts, which have been developed in part to keep the public informed, but also as a recruitment tool, providing information to anyone who might have an interest in becoming a lifeguard.
At 10:30 p.m. on the night of Cartier’s save, O’Brien wrote: “...While manning the ‘frontlines’ (as the Hammo guards say) at West beach, he spotted a swimmer outside the zone go under. Executing a successful board rescue save, he monitored breathing while bringing the 13-year-old to shore. Joe 2 is the youngest on the Hammo squad of 29 guards. His sharp eye and ability to assess and respond with speed exemplifies what it is to be a true lifeguard. Keep up the incredible work!”
Cartier, who also is the rookie of the year, is called Joe 2 because there is another Joe who started working there as a lifeguard before him.
On Aug. 7, the Hammo squad took home the Trident Cup trophy, despite posting a weak performance in the talent category, a last-minute decision involving a song from the Lion King.
Even though the Hammo crew includes two piano players, a flautist, a trombone player, and a singer, O’Brien says, “Yeah, we came in dead last on that.”
Categories where they did prevail? A relay race from Meigs Point to East Beach that starts with a mile-long sprint on the sand that tags to a long swim that tags to the last leg, someone on a rescue board who paddles to the finish line.
“We won that one,” O’Brien says.
O’Brien’s Facebook post about the Trident Games highlighted the strong work of all of the state park crews.
And, on Aug. 11 came a post about Dube’s save.
“...Alec was on Chair 9 at the time when he saw a man struggling to stay afloat while getting thrashed by the waves. Without hesitation Alec ran in and performed a rear facing rescue, then brought the man to shore. Alec is the most jacked guard we have on the Hammo squad and possibly in the whole state. We are very proud of his consistency in active scanning, dedication, and hard work.”
Lifeguard Shortage
Picking the right people and training them for this job involves higher stakes than for some other positions since saving lives is involved. It’s a task made even more difficult because the number of people interested in working as a lifeguard has dropped over the years, leaving many shoreline town beaches with empty guard chairs.
“Everyone’s feeling the hurt of the lifeguard shortage,” says Battistini.
Battistini responded to that challenge with a multi-pronged strategy. In the off seasons she became a regular at college and high school recruitment events. She upped the team’s outreach on social media. She sent a flyer to every single high school and college in the state that had a swim team, and also to every high school and college within a 15 to 20 minute drive of a park. The state also started absorbing the cost of training and certification, which can run from $200 to $400 per guard.
Once she got a stream of applicants, she kept an eye out for smart teens and young adults who excel at teamwork, leadership, and communication.
“Yeah, sports helps a lot and we also have as lifeguards many musically inclined people. They get it,” she says. “They have to practice their instrument and be in time and have teamwork and communication with other people in the band. So if people say that’s their hobbies, sports and orchestras, we try to recruit them and give them the free training. They’ll probably fit in as a lifeguard.
“Also, boy scouts, girl scouts, people with a high level of social responsibility and conscientiousness. A lot is expected of these guards. They have to sit and stay focused and watch other people, and then they have to spring into action...People are depending on you to save their life,” she says.
Not content to save lives just in the water, Battistini also wants to figure out how she and her staff can help reduce the rising number of incidents. She is a member of the Water Safety Task Force of the Connecticut General Assembly’s Commission on Women, Children and Seniors. Working with legislators, non-profit foundations, water safety experts, and state agency and community leaders, she is trying to come up with “systems change in how we address the needs of children and families to reduce unintentional drownings,” she says.
“In Connecticut, unintentional drowning is one of the leading causes of children’s deaths, with autistic and minority children disproportionately impacted,” she says, citing material developed by the task force. “The objective of the task force is to explore ways in which to provide equitable access to water safety awareness for all children and reduce the number of unintentional drownings and hospitalizations through identification of policies and best practices and how we may support them in Connecticut.”
Keep Swimming
In the off season, Battistini will be crunching the numbers to tease out reasons behind the increase in incidents this year. Many of the incidents appear to be unattended minors in swim areas. She wants to see if there are other clues hidden in the numbers.
“So we want to see if there’s something we can do to better educate the public,” she says. “Even though lifeguards are on duty, for example, it’s still the parents’ responsibility to be within arms reach, so that’s a message we need to push out. We also need to see if there’s something else going on.”
She’s also looking for more lifeguard applicants. Anyone interested should follow “CT State Park Lifeguards” on social media and look for announcements later this year.
“Reach out to the park where you want to work, to the park manager, and that manager can let you know as soon as the class is posted,” she says.
At Hammonasset, the manager is Bill Mattioli (203-245-2785 or William.Mattioli@ct.gov).
And, she says, keep swimming.
“Lifeguards need to be able to swim confidently,” she says.
To say the least. To work at a shoreline beach, applicants have to swim about 22 laps in 12 minutes or less, tread water for two minutes using legs only, retrieve a 10-pound brick in about 7 to 10 feet of water, and swim 15 yards underwater in a single breath. And that’s just for starters. Battistini wants candidates who excel at teamwork, leadership, and communication.
Successful candidates will be part of a team.
“Never are you out there alone,” she says. “You will always have a backup. And it’s exciting. That’s an advantage we have over a pool, watching people swimming laps. Nothing against that, that’s lifeguarding in its own right. But this is our largest state park. We see a lot of people. We respond to a lot of incidents. You’ll form friendships that last throughout the years and learn things that translate to regular professions. It’s a fun job. It’s a meaningful job. And who doesn’t want to work at the beach every day?”