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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

70 Percent Good site focusing on reporting and documenting break conditions for waveriders
Coastal Marine Resource Center Non-profit from the New York-New Jersey Harbor Bight
Free PB Opposition to additional beach regulations at San Diego’s Pacific Beach
Race for the Oceans A forum for swimmers and swimming fans to dive in to ocean conservation.
Surfrider Foundation Activities and campaigns for clean water, beach access, beach preservation and protecting special places.