Sunderland lifeguard Tom's tips for water safety

Sunderland Echo

Sunderland Echo reporter Neil Fatkin speaks to lifeguard Tom Hughes about staying safe in the sea during summer.

Transcript

00:00With the sun shining and summer ever eventually arrived, I've come down to Roka beach here to speak

00:04to the senior lifeguards about how families and children can stay safe when they're out in the

00:09water during the summer holidays. So at Roka we have three lifeguards, at Cat and Dogs we have two

00:13and at Seaburn we have four and that's sort of been decided as a function of the population of

00:17the beach that we get during the summer. My advice for families who want to come down to the beach,

00:24primarily that would be to choose a lifeguarded beach and the way you can know that is because

00:28we'll be flying red and yellow flags. So if you see red and yellow flags on the beach that means

00:33there's a lifeguard patrolling there. The red and yellow flag means the safest place to swim

00:39so we've looked at the conditions of the water, looked for the dangers like rip currents,

00:46big waves, rocks, depending on the tide and decided which was the safest place to go. So

00:52if you want to swim, swim between the red and yellow flags. We're here every single day from

00:57May to September, 10 o'clock till 6 o'clock and day-to-day operations of the beach, name of the

01:02game is prevention. So we have red and yellow flags, we've got one over here and one over here and every

01:08day we'll review the tide times and the conditions of the beach and the sea to decide where the red

01:16and yellow flags go. Every single day we'll be watching all day long the water and if someone

01:21needs rescuing we will go in and rescue them so the advice I'd give to someone if they did get

01:26into trouble would be to float to live. I don't know if you've heard that before but essentially

01:30you want to lay back on your back and have your head above the water with your ears submerged,

01:36arms out and gently go side to side. It doesn't matter if your legs go down a little bit, everyone

01:40floats a little bit differently. The important thing is to make sure you can gather your breath

01:45because even though in the summer it is warm in the air but the sea is still very cold and cold

01:49water shock is still a big risk so you want to try and make sure you can get your breath

01:54and then hand in the air call for a lifeguard. So we put information here about temperature, tide

02:00times, winds, general condition and other local information. A lot of the people who come to the

02:07beach really appreciate this because for example roadway cat and dogs here there's a access point

02:12that cuts off because of the tide so people will review this to see whether or not they can get

02:18around in time so we do this every single day. All of the lifeguards here train to a high level

02:23of first aid which is called casualty care so sometimes we have to do first aid where we use

02:29this casualty care but a lot of the time it's just minor first aids, talking to people, giving

02:35people advice about some of the dangers so at low tide there's a lot of rocks that

02:39appear so we'll move the red and yellow flags to make sure that people know where the safest place

02:44is away from those rocks to swim. So it's all about prevention and letting people know where's

02:50the safest place to swim, what we can do to keep safe whilst we're at the beach and all those kinds

02:55of things yeah. Just before the summer holidays I mean this year the weather hasn't been great so

02:59we've had plenty of time to do lots of training so when when it's quiet that's what we'll be doing

03:04we'll be training on the rescue watercraft or on our rescue boards or just swimming or running or

03:11any kind of fitness because we do try to maintain a high level of fitness in the RMLI

03:17but when the summer holidays do start that's when the real work begins and we'll do a lot

03:23a lot more during that time. So this is our rescue tube so when lifeguards on the beach will always

03:28be carrying one of these so this is sort of if someone like a swimmer is maybe not too far out

03:35and we're close by we can go in with one of these and get them to hold on to it it's very buoyant

03:41this you can hold about three people on one of these to stabilize them and then we can swim

03:45them back with this. If maybe the surf's a bit bigger or there's multiple casualties or maybe

03:50it's a bit further out we use a rescue board here so this is a lot of fun to train on but also very

03:56very useful for rescuing people so we will go out on one of these and get the casualty on the front

04:03this is also really good if someone's unconscious in the water because then we can flip the board

04:07upside down and then flip the casualty onto the top. Obviously we've got the rescue watercraft

04:13here but for example the rescue board we could go upwards up to 200 meters out with with this to

04:20rescue somebody. Obviously it's all conditions or requires like an assessment of the conditions

04:28depending on how we're going to go about a rescue and it's very dynamic deciding on what piece of

04:33equipment we're going to use and and how we're going to organize it. A lot of the time it's

04:38multiple pieces of equipment being used side by side so a swimmer might come out and stabilize

04:43the casualty with this and someone might come out on a board to retrieve the casualty because

04:47it's a lot quicker. If someone's further out or there's a couple of casualties or maybe a vessel

04:54then we'll use the rescue watercraft here this is a very very quick piece of kit very very useful.

05:00Last season I had to rescue a young man because there was very strong offshore wind so offshore

05:05means that the wind is blown out to sea and he had kicked his football into the sea and his

05:10football was drifting out he decided to go and swim after it and the ball was drifting out and

05:16he was also swimming after it. He was kind of locked in on the ball and didn't realize how quickly

05:22it was moving away so he was closing the distance but he was also swimming quite far out. I noticed

05:28this happening quite early whilst I was on patrol and decided to go in on a board before he'd even

05:33reached the ball. By the time he reached the ball I'd got to him he turned around

05:39realized how far he was and that in fact he was only halfway because if you think about it when

05:45it was about 55 meters just about and I could see he was already struggling as he was swimming

05:51out he wasn't a very strong swimmer but yeah he reached his ball turned around realized

05:58he had made a mistake and luckily I was there in that moment so got him on the board and got

06:04him back in. When the strong offshore winds we would usually fly an orange wind sock that says

06:08no inflatables so that's our advice not to take a paddleboard in. With that being said some people

06:16have chosen to take one in anyway and been blown out to sea and in that scenario we would use the

06:22RWC to go and give them advice or retrieve them and bring them back to shore. To actually become

06:27a lifeguard we have to do a national beach lifeguard qualification as well as that the

06:33RNLI requires that we complete a fitness test so 400 meter swim in seven and a half minutes

06:39a 200 meter beach run in 40 seconds so that's the basic minimum training to actually become a

06:47lifeguard. When we're actually on the beach we do a lot of training on the job so a lot of fitness

06:53training a lot of competency training on the rescue boards and we also do training for the

06:59RWC and the quad bike. So a rip current is essentially when the waves are breaking along the

07:05shore the water will funnel out into one spot and create a current of water going straight out to

07:12sea. It's not always very obvious to to see that but us lifeguards we spend all day here so

07:19we know the beach very well we can spot these quite well we'll move the red and yellow flags away

07:24from these and give advice if there is a rip current but if you do end up in one it'll take

07:28you straight out to sea and the instinct is to try and swim straight against it and if you do

07:35that you're just going to get tired because you're not going to beat the strength of the current.

07:40The advice we would give is swim to the side parallel to the shore and do what I said before

07:47float on your back and call for help. If you do see someone in trouble

07:50most important thing is never go in after them call 999 ask for the coast guard if you are a

07:57lifeguarded beach which hopefully you will be come and shout for the lifeguards and and we will come

08:03come and help.

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