Drownings at iconic beach raise red flags over uptick in ocean deaths

July 20, 2024

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A string of drownings at an iconic Florida beach community has sparked alarm as officials warn that powerful storms, a shortage of lifeguards and stubborn tourists are fueling another surge in ocean deaths. Since the start of the year, the National Weather Service has recorded 60 drownings at beaches across the United States, a spate of tragedies on pace to potentially challenge a modern-day record.

The deaths have been especially pronounced along beaches in the Gulf of Mexico, including six linked to rip currents since June 15 at Panama City Beach, which draws scores of families and retirees each year to the Florida Panhandle. Nationwide, 55 of the 60 drowning deaths this year have been tied to rip currents, powerful channels of water that can quickly pull a swimmer out to sea.

The deaths have rattled local officials as the Fourth of July holiday approaches and communities struggle to recruit lifeguards, who for years have been demanding higher pay and better working conditions. At Panama City Beach, the deaths have also sparked a bitter debate over whether more could have been done to prevent the drownings. Despite its dependence on beach tourism, the city has fewer lifeguards on duty than many other communities, according to water safety experts.

“They are basically luring people to this area and not providing adequate safety,” said Jim McCrady, vice president of the Southeast region at the United States Lifesaving Association, a trade group for beach and surf lifeguards. He said he has repeatedly lobbied Panama City Beach officials to boost the number of lifeguards there.

Panama City Beach officials called the drownings a “tragedy” in a recent statement and have defended their community’s safety measures. Debbie Ingram, a spokeswoman for the city, noted in response to questions from The Washington Post that resources are limited in a city that does not assess a property tax. Hotel bed taxes are paid to a local tourism council, but state laws regulate how much can go toward public safety.

According to an average of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data from 2012 through 2022, the United States typically records about 87 surf zone fatalities each year, including an average of 65 caused by rip currents. The modern-day record for such fatalities occurred in 2021, when Americans flocked to beaches in droves to wash off the stress from the coronavirus pandemic. There were 130 surf zone fatalities that year, including 98 caused by rip currents.

Although much of the recent focus has been on the Gulf of Mexico, NOAA data shows rip currents have been deadly this year all along American shorelines. Since Memorial Day weekend, deaths from rip currents have also occurred in Pawleys Island, S.C., Lea Island, N.C., Fanshell Beach, Calif., and separate incidents in Sandy Hook and Avon-by-the-Sea in New Jersey, according to NOAA data. Rip currents also occur on the Great Lakes, and a 7-year-old boy from Chicago died in Lake Michigan on June 15.

Although some scientists have suggested that climate change and warming oceans are fueling more summer storms, leading to a heightened risk of rip currents, NOAA officials said more research is needed to determine whether there is a connection. They noted that rip currents have always been an issue and are just as likely to happen when chilly winter storms drive frigid water onto beaches. The United States Lifesaving Association estimates 80 percent of ocean drownings in the country are caused by rip currents.

“The important thing to remember is, when we see rip current drownings and rescues, it is a combination of rip currents occurring and people being in the water,” said Gregory Dusek, a senior scientist at NOAA who has developed a model that can now predict up to six days ahead of time where rip currents are most likely to occur. “So, it is really hard to tell if more rip currents are occurring in any particular year,” he added. Dusek and other experts said the chief problem remains swimmers who make poor decisions or decide to swim at unguarded or lightly guarded beaches.

In Florida’s Volusia County, which includes Daytona Beach, lifeguards have already performed about 1,300 rescues this year, including more than 300 over Memorial Day weekend, said Tammy Malphurs, deputy chief of the county Beach Safety Rescue Service. The county has had three drownings, including two on the first two days of June caused by rip currents.

Malphurs said the county appears to be experiencing more rip currents than usual this year after the region was hit by Hurricanes Ian and Nicole last year. Hurricanes can disrupt and shred sandbars, or pull sand from shore into the sea, creating new ones. Such changes can lead to more rip currents.

Like many communities nationwide, Malphurs said the county is struggling to retain lifeguards for its 47 miles of shoreline. She said the county has 192 seasonal lifeguards on the payroll, but about a quarter of them show up to work only one or two days all summer. The county operates under a system where some lifeguards decide for themselves what days they want to work, at a starting salary of $15 an hour.

“We are down quite a bit,” said Malphurs, adding that “there are more jobs out there now that have a lot more flexibility” than being a lifeguard. “Working on the beach is very physically demanding,” she added. “You have to be very responsible. There are drug screenings. You are sitting in a tower all day, away from cellphones, away from social media, so we think all of that combined is probably the problem.”

Tom Gill, vice president of USLA and chief of the Virginia Beach Lifesaving Service, predicted the challenges facing the industry will continue until localities pay lifeguards more money. He believes those concerns will become even more pronounced in the coming years as ocean temperatures warm and weather patterns continue to evolve.

In Virginia Beach, Gill said powerful rip currents occur even when a hurricane or strong storm passes hundreds of miles off the Mid-Atlantic coast. “Are we seeing bigger storms because of warmer waters?” Gill said. “We are not here to play politics. We are here to say what we are seeing on the beaches. But yes, we have seen some of the craziest weather” in recent months.

According to the USLA, the chance of drowning at a beach monitored by lifeguards is about one in 18 million. On crowded beaches, the USLA recommends that localities have enough lifeguards that one can respond to a swimmer in distress within two minutes or less. After a string of drowning deaths in the Florida Panhandle in the 1990s, the USLA began aggressively targeting beachfront communities there for outreach and training.

B. Chris Brewster, a leader of the International Life Saving Federation, was involved in the effort and said many Florida towns heeded his advice, but that Panama City Beach did not. “The general attitude of that particular community has been kind of, ‘It is not our problem,’” said Brewster, who helped Destin Beach launch its modern lifeguard program. “It is a major evasion of civic responsibility on the part of Panama City Beach.”

Brewster and McCrady said the tourist location has about 25 lifeguards who monitor its nine miles of beaches. About 4.5 million people visit Panama City Beach each year, many heading to the shore. By comparison, McCrady said Hallandale Beach, where he serves as lifeguard chief, has 25 lifeguards hired to patrol less than a mile of beach.

McCrady said Miami Beach, which has about eight miles of beaches, has about 150 full-time and part-time lifeguards. Panama City Beach “should have 120 to 150 lifeguards,” he said, adding that he has heard from sobbing Panama City Beach lifeguards who said they are stretched too thin.

Daryl Paul, the Panama City Beach safety director, was unavailable for an interview. But he told the Panama City News Herald this month that the city was prepared for summer travel season. He said the city had nine full-time and 13 seasonal lifeguards, and three vacant positions.

Two years ago, Panama City Beach launched a pilot program that offers to station lifeguards in front of hotels interested in paying about $40,000, the cost of paying and training a lifeguard for the six-month swim season in the area, but Ingram said only one hotel took the city up on its offer. After the recent drownings, she said three other resorts have inquired about the program.

The spate of deaths, including three last Saturday involving tourists from Georgia and Michigan, has upset both lifeguards and local leaders. In Bay County, which includes Panama City Beach, Sheriff Tommy Ford chided swimmers for ignoring surf warning flags. “I am beyond frustrated at the situation that we have with tragic and unnecessary deaths in the Gulf,” he wrote on social media. “I have seen strangers die trying to save their children and loved ones, including two fathers on Father’s Day.”

Ruth Corley, the public information officer at the Bay County Sheriff’s Department, said double red flags, which indicate beaches are closed due to rough conditions, had been posted at the time of most of the drownings. Five of the six drownings in Panama City Beach were on days with double red flag conditions. “We use multiple methods to alert people that its double red including geofence text message through the alert system.” she said. “We even use the banner planes,” and “everyone is doing everything they can to alert people,” she added.

McCrady said the international system of hoisting warning flags during rough surf conditions was never intended to replace lifeguards, except perhaps during hurricanes and when sharks have been spotted in the water. “The flag system is supposed to be a minor tool used by on-duty lifeguards to better manage their bathing areas,” he said. “Nobody puts up double red flags for rip currents unless they are vastly understaffed.”

Corley said the Florida Panhandle has experienced an especially windy and stormy summer, which has carved new breaks in sandbars. Rip currents tend to form in areas where deeper waters funnel through sandbars as crashing waves retreat. “It is the perfect storm,” she said.

While NOAA scientists said more research is needed on any potential link between climate change and rip currents, Dusek said the agency is already investing more to predict when rip currents are likely to occur. Two years ago, Dusek helped develop the National Rip Current Forecast Model, which uses a physics-based approach to issue forecasts for dangerous rip currents “every mile along the beach, every hour for six days into the future,” he said.

Lifeguards then send real-time information back to NOAA to verify the accuracy of forecasts. Despite those advancements in forecasting, many lifeguards know some tourists are going to enter the water no matter what warnings they receive. When they unexpectedly find themselves unable to get to shore, every second matters.

“Patrols and flags are helpful, but you also need to be watching the water,” Gill said. “Once they have gone under, you are really looking at two to three minutes for there be a rescue in order for it not to become a recovery.”

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