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July 15, 2007 -

Lifeguarding and Personal Responsibility

This is a bit off-topic since the site’s focus is beaches compared to pools, and since most beach lifeguards are public entity employees the liability issues are like apples and oranges, but I wanted to bring up last week’s incident at Great America in Santa Clara, where a 4-year-old drowned in an amusement park wave pool. The mother got a lot of press with anguished wails about the quality of the lifeguarding, including her claim that only four guards were present instead of the park’s claimed six. The Chron’s article does a good job of discussing the legal standard of care and industry practices near the end. Also of interest was this forum thread at firehouse.com (thanks to Google’s News Alerts for the heads up) discussing personal responsiblity as it applies in this case.

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Interesting Sites

Beachapedia.org Beachapedia
Cal. Coastal Commission Like them or not, they are one of the biggest players around when it comes to coastal access in California.
Howling Point Your moderator’s personal site. He does have a life outside of this, as shown by the occasional gaps in posting.
Surfrider Foundation Activities and campaigns for clean water, beach access, beach preservation and protecting special places.