A Hectic Heat Wave

By by Kailey Aiken

With another heat wave hitting New York City this week, the beach has once again been packed and lifeguards have been kept busy. At 97 Shack, we’ve had multiple cases almost every day, but Sunday was a particularly chaotic day.

As lifeguards were just getting into the chairs at 10 a.m., there was a case in the rip on Beach 97th Street. Lifeguards quickly swam out and brought the victims in. A case that early is never a good sign for the rest of the day, as the water is typically calmest in the mornings.

For the next two hours, the rip currents only worsened, and we were in and out of the water every 20 minutes, at least. Typically, we try to move people away from the rip currents and only allow them to swim in certain areas. Unfortunately, the entire area was ripping on Sunday and there was no “safe” place to swim.

Around 1 p.m., we called everyone out of the water for a shark sighting close to shore near Beach 106th Street. As you can imagine, nobody was very happy about that but after hearing that there was a shark nearby, people were far more willing to listen. One man, however, had no intention of leaving the water and rolled around in the shore break cursing at lifeguards and yelling, “surf’s up.” Eventually Parks security got him out of the water, and he was removed from the beach after cursing out lifeguards, Parks security, cops, and random beach patrons.

The water was reopened around 3 p.m. and the cases started up again. Every now and then, we check on the closed beaches (where people are constantly swimming despite signs and flags that say, “beach closed” and PEP constantly throwing them out of the water), and it was a good thing we did, because we ended up having to go in to rescue three different people. A surfer lent us his foam top board for one case, and buoys were run over from the chairs for the others.

A missing woman had been reported early on in the day and hadn’t been found, so we performed a shallow water sweep as a precaution to ensure she had not been in the water. Around 5:30 p.m., she was found alive and well on Beach 77th Street, with different people than she had come to the beach with.

At the end of the day, we packed up and brought our equipment back to the shack. Luckily, a few guards were taking their time getting off the beach and spotted three struggling swimmers who had gone back in the water after we called everyone out. The rest of us ran back to the beach from the shack and brought the three victims safely to shore around 6:20 p.m.

It seemed like everything that could possibly happen on the beach, did happen on Sunday, and it’s almost hard to believe it was all only one day. Sundays have had a pretty bad track record this summer, but maybe things will turn around next week.