Lifeguards: reluctant heroes, but still heroes
LIt’s happening in front of you and you have to deal with it on the spot — there’s no chance to collect yourself. Lifeguard supervisor Amanda Lust
ifeguards are the underappreciated fifth pillar of the public safety system, says city manager Peter Weeber, whose staff at the Penticton Community Centre were this week credited with helping bring back another patron from the brink of death.
“Often the spotlight is firmly placed on our firefighters, paramedics, police and search-and-rescue teams (because) they are mobile and have a high profile in the community,” Weeber said in a statement Thursday.
“Our lifeguards are also highly trained professionals that quietly protect our residents and our children at the recreation center. They are low profile because they do a great job watching over the people they protect.”
Weeber added the city is proud of all of its emergency responders, and it’s “important to celebrate the wins of our local heroes.”
Lifeguard supervisor Amanda Lust is too humble to call herself a hero, but agrees she and her colleagues may be overlooked as part of the larger emergency services team.
“I don’t really know how people feel about us, but we’re definitely one of the pillars, because when something happens, we have to respond to it in that moment,” she said.
“It’s happening in front of you and you have to deal with it on the spot — there’s no chance to collect yourself.”
Lust, 30, was the first of two lifeguards who jumped into action Tuesday afternoon after being called to a report of a man in his 20s in distress outside the physiotherapy clinic at the community centre.
“He was slumped down in a chair. I called out to him, there was no response,” she recalled.
Lust radioed fellow lifeguard Reid NobleHearle to bring the pool’s crash cart — containing a first-aid kit, automated external defibrillator and other emergency gear — to the scene.
“We lowered him to the ground and he was unresponsive and not breathing, so we started out CPR protocols,” she said.
The two performed CPR until paramedics arrived and took over. The patient regained consciousness before being taken to hospital by ambulance. The city has not received an update on his condition.
Lust helped calm onlookers while the paramedics did their work, and then returned to her duties.
“I would say the training kind of helps with that. Everything was just kind of second nature,” she said.
Required training for aquatics staff includes a National Lifeguard Service Award and water safety instructor certification, both renewed at least every two years, plus standard first-aid that must get refreshed annually.
That training has paid off in spades, with lifeguards having been credited with saving at least two other lives at the centre in the past two years.
In January 2015, they revived a woman who went into cardiac arrest while swimming. In April 2016 they did the same for a man who collapsed while playing pickleball.