PANAMA CITY BEACH — For Daryl Paul, lifeguards have a “monumental” responsibility to help protect beachgoers.
As beach safety director for Panama City Beach Fire Rescue, Paul said local beach lifeguards performed 21 rescues on Friday alone. They also performed 27 public assists and about 7,400 preventative actions that day.
Rescues are when someone was pulled from the water who likely would have otherwise drowned. Public assists are when a lifeguard enters the water to prevent someone from needing to be rescued. Preventative actions are when a lifeguard prevents someone from needing assistance.
“It was so busy that our lifeguards couldn’t even key up on the radio to let anyone know that they’re entering the water for a rescue,” Paul said. “Everyone was hemming at the channel.”
The day started with yellow flags flying. By that afternoon, they had been upgraded to double red. The rescues happened under yellow and single-red flags.
Paul noted beach safety flags were upgraded to red at about noon, and they were upgraded again to double red about 3 p.m.
“The issue over the weekend was it was fairly calm seas. It looked great, but our rip currents are very developed, and they are set,” he said. “We fly to the conditions, and single-red flags still mean high hazard. What we’ve found is people simply don’t heed the warning.”
Rip currents are fast-moving currents created by channels in sandbars. The channels run perpendicular to the shoreline and cause water to funnel faster out into deeper waters. Rip currents can vary in strength, depending on how developed the channels are. They can sometimes be identified from shore where there is a gap in the wave break — areas where the white caps of the breaks are less noticeable.
Officials have noted that local beach flags do not represent how large the waves are, but the strength of rip currents at that time. That’s why red or double-red flags can fly even when surf conditions appear calm from the shore.
Common flag colors used in beach flag warning systems include a green flag for low hazard conditions, a yellow flag for medium hazard conditions, one red flag for high hazard conditions and two red flags for very dangerous conditions.
Panama City Beach and Bay County, however, never fly green flags because officials say beachgoers should always be cautious anytime they enter the Gulf. It also is illegal in Bay County to swim in double-red-flag conditions under penalty of a $500 fine.
“A rip current can even be difficult at times for a trained professional to spot,” Paul said. “That’s why we train our lifeguards to find rips in different ways. That’s also why we’re strong advocates for swimming near a lifeguard. If there’s not a lifeguard in your immediate area to point these things out to you, you’re taking on a great risk.”
According to Paul, all of the Beach’s rescues, assists and preventative actions from Friday were performed by only eight lifeguards.
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By the end of the day, Panama City Beach so far in 2024 had logged 95 rescues, 254 public assists and more than 163,000 preventative actions.
To sign up for daily text alerts on local beach flag conditions, text “PCBFLAGS” to 888777.
“When you visit Panama City Beach, please visit responsibly,” Paul said. “Please visit safely. Please swim near a lifeguard. Please heed the flag warnings. We want you to come visit Panama City Beach and make long-lasting memories with your family and love ones, but we also want you to return home safely. The lifeguards are simply trying to prevent the empty seat on the car ride home.”
This article originally appeared on The News Herald: Panama City Beach lifeguards rescue 21 beachgoers in one day
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