The Rescue

What a beautiful fall evening! It was about 6:00 p.m. and I just finished conducting a safety training session for Virginia Beach High School swim coaches at the Great Neck Recreation Center near Cox High School. The High School Varsity Swimming season was scheduled to begin in a few weeks. As I left the building, I made the decision to go to one of the other swimming pools that I supervise. I frequently drop by like this to get a little one-on-one supervision time with my employees. In reality, I was avoiding going home because I wanted my husband to be the parent to accompany my son to an organizational meeting for Boy Scouts. I was avoiding attending because knowing me, I would volunteer for a job which I had little time to do with my busy schedule.

When I arrived at the pool, the night supervisor and I chatted for a while about work related issues. As we were sitting there, instructional classes were being conducted with over 60 children and lap swim was also going on with several participants. I heard the signal-3 short, loud blasts of the lifeguard’s whistle. I looked up and saw the lifeguard scrambling out of the lifeguard stand. I started to move as he jumped into the water and submerged in the first lap lane.

As I arrived at the spot adjacent to where he entered the pool, he was pulling an unconscious male swimmer from the bottom of the pool. The pool was only about 4 feet deep in this area. How could this have happened in such shallow water? I rolled the swimmer onto his back and began to check vital signs. I checked for breathing, the lifeguard was checking for a pulse. He was not breathing! He did have a pulse. That was a relief. The other supervisor handed us protective equipment. We donned gloves and began providing rescue breathing using a bag valve mask. The air went in, thank God!

The victim started foaming at the mouth. The foam was the consistency of the foam made when pouring a glass of beer but it was pink. There was so much we had to rinse the face mask of the bag valve in the swimming pool. Rinses, place mask, give a breath, repeat. He vomited. We rolled him on his side and cleared his airway. I was kneeling in it. You don’t really even think about how gross this is until afterwards, you just keep going.

While this was going on, the staff of instructors cleared the kids out of the pool and had them sit on the opposite side of the pool. Someone thought enough to be sure they could not see what was happening. Other staff called 911. A parent who was at the center with their child for swim lessons introduced himself. He was a captain with the Virginia Beach Fire Department. He began to assist with providing rescue breathing. The victim began to cough and vomit again. Finally, he began to breathe on his own.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) arrived and evaluated him. It seemed like hours until they got there. Later I found out it was less than 4 minutes. As EMS assumed caring for the victim, the lifeguard and I moved out of the way. This was my first opportunity to actually look at the victim’s face. I realized who it was. I had just hired him as a lifeguard two weeks earlier. I couldn’t believe it. His skills had been evaluated during the interview process. His rescue skills were very good and he swam well. His time for the 500m swim was one of the best times that we had seen during an interview that fall.

We were not sure he was going to make it. His breathing was shallow and irregular. They placed him on oxygen and put him in the ambulance for transport to the hospital. We began to clean up and recover. Most of the children’s parents realized what was happening and quickly came to get their children. Then the phone rang. An EMS supervisor was on the phone telling me that the victim had died on the way to the hospital. I was in shock. How do I tell the lifeguard about this? He was upset because he was a friend and classmate of the victim. Then the phone rang again. He was not dead. This was crazy! Was he or wasn’t he dead? After a phone call to the hospital, we found out he was still alive but breathing with assistance. Thank goodness! I never told the lifeguard about the first phone call.

The rest of the evening was a blur! Reports to be completed, cleanup procedures to be done and finally a shower for me! Then the office phone rang, a TV reporter had arrived. She was in the lobby; her truck with the tall antenna was in front of the building all set up for the 11:00 p.m. news. She wanted information. Neither I nor the lifeguard wanted to talk to her. We had done our job, that was all there was to it. Our training kicked in and we had saved a life. Somehow she found out the victim’s name, age, where he went to school and that he had recently been hired as a lifeguard. It was all over the news that night. The headline read “Lifeguard Drowns in Recreation Center Pool”.

During the next few hours, more reporters arrived. We did not want to talk to them! My supervisor met us at a side door to the building with her car and gave us a ride to our cars. Going out the front door was impossible. When I got home that night, I took another shower. That is when it really hit me what happened that night. I couldn’t stop crying. It was a relief to know that the victim would survive.

My husband and son were very sympathetic once they understood what happened. We watched the 11 p.m. news and saw all the reporters doing live reports from the front of the recreation center.

I thought it would be over by the next day but I was wrong about that. Several reporters were asking for interviews with us. We declined. The City arranged for the Director of Emergency Medical Services to conduct a press conference. Unfortunately the press conference was scheduled at the same time and place where we were participating in an Emergency Debriefing. A counselor with special training conducted the debriefing. Everyone directly involved in the situation is expected to participate. A debriefing allows the incident to be reviewed from the perspective of each person involved. No blame or credit is assigned to anyone. It is also an opportunity to educate those involved about how they may respond after being involved in a rescue. Right in the middle of our debriefing, a reporter burst into the room with a cameraman. She was told several times that she was not allowed in the debriefing but somehow she found out what room we were in and entered. She was rude, aggressive and determined to get the story. Fortunately because of everything that had happened, there were some police officers in the building and they quickly escorted her out of the room. Since then I have not had much patience or understanding when reporters push a microphone and camera in the face of a family member who just had a bad experience.

That afternoon after all the commotion of the press conference and debriefing were over we were able to get away and visit the victim in the hospital. What a relief it was to find him alert and responsive, he was going to be OK. He was still breathing with oxygen. He was able to talk to us. He did not remember any of the accident. A few weeks later he returned to work as a lifeguard and continued to work until he graduated from high school. He was never able to become a Navy Seal because he suffered some permanent damage to his lungs from the accident.