At our monthly Kaua‘i Water Safety Task Force meetings, the first agenda item is a review of the previous month’s drownings and rescues. As we approached the end of 2009 we’d had three meetings in a row with no drownings
At our monthly Kaua‘i Water Safety Task Force meetings, the first agenda item is a review of the previous month’s drownings and rescues. As we approached the end of 2009 we’d had three meetings in a row with no drownings to report, and we were daring to hope that maybe, finally, all the effort that has gone into this problem was beginning to pay off. Events that took place in this holiday season destroyed that wishful thinking, along with the lives of five families.
For the sake of some degree of brevity, I won’t at this time review the efforts and accomplishments that have been achieved in Kaua‘i water safety. Suffice it to say that the county, the state, certain segments of the visitor industry, and a determined cadre of volunteers have put into place quite a number of very significant programs designed to reduce the number of drownings here. First and foremost, we now have 45 superbly trained and equipped lifeguards, whereas not very long ago we had 11 working out of four rusting towers and a beat up 10-year-old truck for the supervisor. Although we have to believe that these accomplishments have averted many drownings, the in-your-face fact is that we’re still not doing enough.
Our mayor’s recent letter to The Garden Island Forum was a very welcome rallying call as we start the new year with renewed hope and vigor. His message, namely that for all of our sophisticated and expensive programs, the biggest key of all may still be to tell each and every visitor to “Please swim only at beaches where there is a lifeguard. Please ignore the guide books that tell you to enjoy Kipu Falls or Queen’s Bath. Those places are too dangerous. If you are determined to swim at an unguarded beach, please don’t go into the water or walk on a rock ledge until you have talked with a local person who is there.”
We all know that many will not heed this advice, and some pay the ultimate price for this. This is very frustrating — among other painful emotions — and it sometimes makes us want to call these visitors “stupid” and to give up on any effort to advise them properly. The fact is that most aren’t stupid at all. (I was once involved in the resuscitation of a Nobel Prize winner in physics). Rather, they are clueless; and when you combine that with a dogged determination to maximize your vacation fun — that’s an unsafe and sometimes deadly combination in our waters. Any one of us could well act the same way when visiting another destination.
So, we have to continuously overcome our frustration. I know many remarkable concierges who patiently succeed at this, client after client, hour after hour, day after day. The fact is we have gone to considerable lengths to invite our visitors to enjoy our pretty home. They have been told how our home is beautiful and eco-adventuresome, they have been shown stunning pictures of golden beaches and sparkling blue oceans and gently swaying palm trees — and along with this they need to be told straight up that there are deadly dangers in this pretty picture, and if they pay attention to these dangers, they can avoid family catastrophe.
I have asked the mayor to convene an emergency “summit meeting” on water safety, and I believe this will happen soon, probably in mid-February. Around 20 people will attend — five from our Task Force, along with top politicians, visitor industry leaders, and ocean safety professionals. Each person will be allowed three to five minutes to answer the questions “What are we missing? What are we not doing? What can we do better?” Answers will be tabulated and collated, and maybe out of this we can find more solutions that will help. Any such solutions of course will be under the constraint of a very down economy (e.g. no new lifeguard hires), but I still think that within this constraint we can look in the mirror and see that we can be doing more.
Our final 2009 numbers were 11 ocean drownings plus four fresh water drownings. (It needs to be noted that some of these official “drownings” occur when a medical emergency from contributing causes (e.g underlying heart disease, seizure, even alcohol intoxication) takes place while the person was swimming.) These numbers dwarf our fire-death numbers, our murder numbers, and they significantly outweigh our motor vehicle accident mortality numbers. (Very tragically, suicides on Kaua‘i are one trauma death category that can sometimes compete with these drowning figures).
To paraphrase our mayor, this is heavy hearted stuff to dwell on as we all embark on what we want to be a happy New Year. On a far happier note, I still believe that Together We Can, Together We Must, Together We Will. I believe that there will be safety and happiness for many families as we Kauaians keep working on our water safety challenge.
• Dr. Monty Downs, Wilcox Hospital E.R., is a long-time water-safety advocate on Kaua‘i.
