Aug. 22 to 28 has been proclaimed Beach Safety Week in the state.
Mayor Derek Kawakami took the time to officially make a Kaua‘i proclamation, and we water-safety advocates are very grateful for this.
Our mayor has himself suffered two personal family losses to drownings, and he is therefore very aware of this challenge that comes with living in a water-surrounded community. He has again proven that ocean safety is an issue he will work hard for and stand up for, as best as he is able.
There are days and weeks for just about everything these days. For example, Nov. 12 is National Pizza Day. National Ice Cream Day was July 18 (my birthday no less). Why is Beach Safety Week anything we should pay particular attention to?
My answer is simple: seven drowning deaths on Kaua‘i so far in 2021. More than COVID. An average of 10 drowning deaths per year ever since records of this started being kept in the 1970s. I myself started my career as a physician on Kaua‘i in 1972, and there have been around 500 deaths since then.
But numbers aren’t the whole story. I recently heard a radio-news pundit talking about whether Haiti’s recent devastating earthquake was as bad as the 2004 earthquake and tsunami in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Some would say “no way,” since the Indonesian earthquake killed around 200,000 people and the Haiti quake killed approximately 1,900. The wise pundit then pointed out, however, that disasters and catastrophes are personal events and shouldn’t be rated by numbers like this, i.e., if my spouse or parent or child dies from drowning (or COVID, for that matter), that’s my whole life that’s been shattered, regardless of overall numbers.
That’s why ocean safety and beach safety and water safety merit any attention they get. Most drownings are preventable, and if we prevent even one, we have accomplished a whole lot. Just ask the family of someone who has been successfully rescued from what appeared to be certain death.
As for specific ways that this week is being honored on Kaua‘i: First, our ocean safety officers (a formal term for “lifeguards.” I myself prefer the term “lifeguards”) will be cross-training with our firefighters. Underlying benefits of this include the fact that lifeguards work 9 to 5 (although there is momentum building for 10-hour days and therefore more-extended beach coverage), and that leaves many hours in a day where firefighters will be the first responders to beach incidents. Furthermore, in remote areas such as Ke‘e, lifeguards can be the first responder by a full 15 minutes, and any and all firefighter skills that they acquire will serve our community well.
At this point, I need to digress for a moment and clarify the difference between the Ocean Safety Bureau and the Kaua‘i Lifeguard Association. The former is a County of Kaua‘i agency, part of the Kaua‘i Fire Department and staffed by county employees. The latter is a nonprofit whose mission is to help make Kaua‘i’s waters safer. Our KLA President Laola Aea has a long resume’ as water woman extraordinaire and community-giving person extraordinaire.
KLA certainly interfaces closely with the OSB, and thanks to fundraisers and generous sponsors and donors, KLA has been able to support the OSB in a number of ways that include equipment donations as well as lobbying efforts for various issues along the way.
KLA and the OSB also partner closely in Kaua‘i’s Junior Lifeguard program, the 2021 version of which was recently completed. Noteworthy is that Kaua‘i was the only county that managed to emerge from the pandemic enough to run this program this year.
Back to the topic at hand: I noted how the OSB is honoring the mayor’s proclamation. How is KLA honoring it? The answer lies in KLA’s ever-continuing effort to improve prevention efforts.
Even better than having your family member rescued from a near-death water event is having your family member not get in trouble in the first place. Prevention is the key — and it’s a tough nut to crack. Not only with visitors (who represent 75% of our drownings) who step off the plane and check into their hotel room and hot-foot it to the beach, but also with residents who need to be reminded, for example, to never let children out of your sight when they’re in the water.
KLA has been working on this for years, distributing safety brochures, offering up messages on the radio and in our newspaper and other publications, conducting trainings, etc. So have our lifeguards, who document hundreds of thousands of preventions every year, tallying up the people to whom they give safety advice. (e.g., “Don’t go in the ocean here today” or “see that discolored section of water over there? That’s a rip current that can pull you out to sea.”)
KLA’s current effort is focused on developing an effective social-media presence. I pipe dream about a day when a plane lands on Kaua‘i and your cell phone will ding and there will be a message on your screen saying “Welcome to Kaua‘i. Enjoy your stay here. Please make yourself aware of ocean hazards before you jump in, and when in doubt, don’t go out.”
Whether or not this pipe dream turns out to be too unrealistic or too expensive, we are actively taking steps in that direction. We are deeply engaged in upgrading our website, kauailifeguards.com, at the same time that we are working on the strategies that will direct people to this website. We’ve hired on a professional communication consulting company to guide us in this, and steering towards this pipe dream is our goal this week, next week, and in the weeks to come.
Wrapping this up: Kaua‘i’s beaches, along with our mountains and our valleys and our people, are what makes Kaua‘i such a beautiful place. These beaches can also be our graveyard and the graveyard for our family members and our friends and our guests. Please take a moment this week to think about your and your family’s safety, as well as the safety of others. Sometimes all it takes to save a life is saying “Hi. Please be careful in our waters. We have strong currents and other hidden hazards. Please swim where a lifeguard can see you.”
Have a safe week!
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Monty Downs, M.D., is secretary of the Kaua‘i Lifeguard Association.
