The south of England saw some gorgeous weather in June and early July, with crowds flocking to the Dorset coast. But it wasn’t fun in the sun for everyone, as RNLI lifeguards found while patrolling the beaches

The unbroken 7-mile stretch of award winning golden beaches of Poole Bay provides the perfect place for sunbathing, building sandcastles, paddling, swimming, surfing and other watersports. The last weekend of June 2010 saw thousands of people hitting Poole and Bournemouth and the RNLI lifeguards patrolling the 14 beaches were kept busy passing on advice and preventing many incidents from happening – as well as dealing with all kinds of incidents, from minor first aid to lost children.

The RNLI lifeguard team at Bournemouth was especially busy on Sunday 27 June and volunteer lifeguards from Bournemouth Lifeguard Corps also assisted. Among the rescues, RNLI lifeguards rescued two men who had been drinking and had jumped from Bournemouth Pier into deep water and could not reach the shore by themselves. A group of four other men, who were also struggling out of their depth and tiring very quickly, were picked up in the Bournemouth Lifeguard Corps’ patrol boat and brought back to shore.

Later in the day, because of the good weather and the number of people still in the water at 6pm, RNLI lifeguards extended their usual patrol hours to 7pm and Lifeguard Andy Reakes joined the RNLI team from further along the bay as back-up.

But it wasn’t going to be a calm end to the day as Andy soon found out. He noticed a swimmer in trouble about 100m offshore and responded immediately to bring him back to the beach on his rescue board. As other lifeguards on the shore took care of him, Andy immediately paddled back out to rescue another struggling swimmer who was going under the water.

Not long after, two men in their mid-30s messing around on a bodyboard hadn’t noticed that they’d drifted out of their depth. As they let go of the board, one, who was a non-swimmer, was immediately in trouble and the other, a weak swimmer, tired quickly. Andy rushed out to them, giving the swimmer his rescue board to cling to while he grabbed the other man from under the water and pulled him to the surface. Lifeguard Supervisor for Poole and Bournemouth Ed Stevens swam out to assist and brought the man on the rescue board ashore while Andy, who was left without any equipment, used a lifesaving technique to bring the other man back to the beach. Both casualties needed oxygen until paramedics arrived to take them to hospital.

Ed says: ‘With the good weather, young adults not only soak up the sunshine but drink and get into trouble when they cool off in the water. Also, many rescues were to weak swimmers who had drifted out of their depth and if the RNLI lifeguards hadn’t been there, some of them may well have drowned.’ Bay watch Most people think that being a lifeguard is all about glamour and rescues (thanks to a popular 1990s TV show and the media) but what doesn’t make the headlines is the myriad of tasks that lifeguards do as part of their day-to-day work.

Every day starts at 10am and, before the patrols start, all the kit is checked to make sure it’s in good condition and in the right place. Shoreline checks also make sure there’s nothing on the beach that shouldn’t be there.

Patrols are organised for the day, which rotate about every 20–30 minutes to keep the lifeguards fresh and alert. A daily log is filled in every hour, recording the lifeguard’s general activities, the weather conditions, wave height, tide times, the state of the equipment and any incidents. But most of the time is spent observing (surveillance) and giving advice to the hordes of beach goers. As much as 95% of lifeguards’ work is preventative – over one weekend in early July over 7,500 preventative actions were carried out on the Poole and Bournemouth beaches.

Bournemouth East Beach is ethnically diverse with many eastern European or Asian visitors. Ed Stevens says: ‘This multi-cultural mix can present many challenges to us as many speak very little English. Lifeguards may even show them photographs or even draw pictures in the sand to highlight any dangers and hazards.’

He continues: ‘We are kept busy making people aware of the hazards and helping them before they get into trouble and need rescuing but a small minority sadly choose to ignore it. It’s often those that we pull out of the water an hour or two later.’

Vital vigilance

Vigilance is essential and speed, stamina and strength are vital too. Their intensive induction programme before the season starts, along with their weekly training sessions and fitness tests that lifeguards must pass every 30 days, all help towards honing their skills and fitness. Lifeguards never know when they may need to spring into action – from one minute observing or patrolling along the beach to the next sprinting into the sea to carry out a strenuous rescue.

Saturday 3 July saw one such incident when Lifeguards David Pearce and Mickey Delahunty raced quickly to the scene after a 20-year-old Australian sustained severe spinal injuries, badly breaking his neck and three vertebrae in his back. When he dived through the waves into shallow water near a groyne at Sandbanks Beach in Poole, he hit his head on the bottom and as he surfaced he couldn’t feel anything in his arms or legs.

The lifeguards used a special technique (a ‘take-down’) to secure the casualty and stabilise his head and neck before carefully moving him out of the water. Colleagues Craig Needham and Lewis Bacon helped to strap him carefully to a spinal board before passing him over to an ambulance crew who took him to hospital.

Dani Piovan, Senior Lifeguard on Sandbanks Beach says: ‘The lifeguards’ professional first aid training and fitness really came to the fore here and quickly helped to prevent any further injury.’

No two days were ever the same as the lifeguards put all their skills and training into practice over this busy 7-day period early this Summer, but they can be proud that they dealt with over 180 incidents, saved 3 lives and carried out thousands of preventative actions – and lost no one. Lifeguards often say that a bad day at the beach is when you have to go in and rescue someone, or worse, lose someone, but a good lifeguard goes home at the end of the day knowing they have stopped countless numbers of beach users from getting into trouble.