After seven-figure lawsuit, will Myrtle Beach abandon its decades-old lifeguarding system?

On a late August afternoon in 2022, swimmers in Hallandale Beach, Florida were alerted to rip currents and moon jellyfish by yellow and purple flags staked outside the water.

They also could have easily learned that winds would blow at up to 15 mph and waves of up to two feet would be running for surfers by calling a hotline that refreshes daily as conditions change.

Almost 700 miles away in Orange Beach, Alabama, yellow flags were also posted, warning of moderate surf and currents as shown on the surf rescue division’s Facebook page and website.

Like Myrtle Beach, these tourist-reliant coastal communities see a surge between Memorial Day and Labor Day as millions of visitors bask in the sunshine and occupy hotel rooms and timeshares with pristine views of the Atlantic.

But South Carolina’s premier vacation stands alone as the only American city to operate a “dual role” lifeguarding system that allows companies to profit from rental sales in exchange for providing trained rescuers via franchise agreements.

And as the city heads into the final stretch of its tourist season, officials remain silent on whether changes to its system could be coming in the wake of a multi-million dollar judgment against Lack’s Beach Service.

The company in late July was found liable for the 2018 drowning of 41-year-old Zerihun Wolde, a skilled swimmer who was caught in a rip current and pulled underwater along of stretch of beach within Lack’s jurisdiction.

In ordering it to pay Wolde’s estate $20.7 million in damages, a jury concluded the “dual role” system is inherently dangerous because it requires some lifeguards to take their eyes off the water in the name of business.

Dual role guarding is a tradition that stretches back to Myrtle Beach’s earliest days, but faulty enough that the U.S. Lifesaving Association, the country’s largest aquatic safety group, refuses to accredit any program that engages in the practice.

“Our goal is to make Myrtle Beach the cleanest, safest beach in the United States,” Steve Taylor, longtime chairman of the city’s beach advisory committee, said.

Myrtle Beach currently has contracts with John’s Beach Service and Lack’s Beach Service through 2024 and 2025 respectively. Neither are USLA-certified, although the city’s fire department is.

“Most people are not able to swim faster than the current so ultimately, they tire out and submerge, just because they’re completely fatigued. That’s why lifeguards can’t have their attention pulled away from the water, Chris Brewster, chairman of USLA’s national certification committee, told the Sun News Aug. 14. “Someone in distress in the water can’t call 911, and so the only way that an emergency responder is going to be alerted is through visual recognition.”

Between 2015 and 2019, South Carolina averaged 1.56 drownings for every 100,000 people — ranking it 14th nationally over that span according to CDC data.

“We are well aware of the public sentiment and perception of the dual role system,” Taylor said. “At the same time, we feel like over the last seven years, Myrtle Beach has had a very safe oceanfront, and there’s no statistical evidence that doesn’t support that.”

Taylor is the first appointed or elected city official to speak publicly about the status of its life guarding system since the July 29 verdict against Lack’s.

At an Aug. 17 beach advisory committee meeting, members spent more than hour behind closed doors to talk about franchisee contracts and pending litigation against “beach service providers,” as city attorney William Bryan Jr. described it.

Neither he nor City Manager Fox Simons elaborated when asked by The Sun News on Aug. 23.

Many of the city’s existing regulations that privately employed lifeguards must meet were written under the tenure of David Stradinger, a land developer who was Myrtle Beach’s city manager from 1975 through 1980.

He inherited the “dual role” system, but was troubled at a lack of uniformity in how they operated.

“At the time, there was no actual training and certification of the lifeguards or any formal screening and no consistency as far as chair, rules and regulations. It was sort of a free market system,” he said. “What we tried to do was leave it as a free market but make it coherent from one end of the beach to the other.”

Those standards include:

⦁ Lifeguards must be posted in designated zones between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily from April 15 through Sept 30, with a full complement of staffed stations from June 2 through the second week of August

⦁ Franchisees are required to provide their lifeguards with first aid kits, rescue buoys and two-way radios with police frequency

⦁ All lifeguards must be at least 17 years old and able to swim 500 meters in 12 minutes

⦁ All lifeguards must be certified in CPR and first aid and complete at least 40 hours of open water life-saving under USLA standards.

This coastal getaway has dedicated lifeguards

It’s a roughly 11-hour drive from Myrtle Beach to Alabama’s Gulf Coast and Orange Beach — a vacation spot that attracts more than 120,000 seasonal visitors as part of the region’s roughly six million tourists.

From March 1 through Oct. 31, more than two dozen seasonal lifeguards are hired to support the town’s two full-time staffers. They’re on the beach daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., with skeleton crews working until sunset from Memorial Day through Labor Day.

The USLA-certified program, a Orange Beach fire department division, assures lifeguards are present at every ocean access point along eight miles of coastline.

“The lifeguards would definitely not have anything to do with chair rentals or anything like that,” said Brett Lesinger, the department’s beach safety division chief. “Their primary obligation is water observation, and we try not to give the lifeguards any other tasks to really do throughout the day.”

A financial breakdown of the town’s lifeguard program was not immediately available.

This North Carolina beach town runs its own lifeguard program

Kure Beach, a town of 2,000 located a short distance from Wilmington, N.C., runs an in-house ocean rescue division that during peak season employs 32 lifeguards who staff ten tower stands across three miles of shore daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

It operates on a $372,000 budget this fiscal year.

J.D. Lanier, a firefighter who manages the USLA-certified Kure Beach Ocean Rescue, said in his more than eight years at its helm, there have never been discussions about putting commerce in the hands of lifeguards. It’s also not a practice used in the surrounding communities of Carolina Beach or Wrightsville Beach, which are also both USLA-backed.

Myrtle Beach could also look to its northern neighbor for another model of protection.

North Myrtle Beach brought its lifeguard operations in-house starting in 2006 after decades of using contracted providers.

This fiscal year, the city has allocated more than $800,000 to pay for its stable of lifeguards, including 115 part-timers hired for the summer months.

Officials expect $3.5 million in revenues this year through rentals, and are planning to spend more than $158,000 over the next four years to replace worn out equipment and purchase of a new beach safety vehicle.

Weslyn Lack Chickering, Lack’s general manager, said in court last month the company carries a $3 million insurance policy but ended the 2021 fiscal year $473,350 in the red.

But she told the city’s beach advisory committee last week its roster of 26 lifeguards — including 12 assigned solely to watch the water and 14 dual role guards — are augmented by five mobile units on ATVs that can respond quickly to emergencies anywhere along the beach.

“As we close a stand due to losing staff, kids going back to school, we red flag the high tide mark and put it on the buoy stand, so if they (swimmers) were used to that lifeguard being there a week ago, they now can see that that lifeguard is not there any longer,” Chickering said Aug. 17.

Between employees offered through John’s Beach Service and the city’s own rescue crews, up to 100 emergency personnel are roving the waterfront at any given time, Taylor said.

Plans are also in the works for larger lifeguard stands.

“The lifeguard services have been on the beaches for 50, 60 years and their first priority is safety,” Taylor said. “I think if the standard is perfection, than no city in the United States in going to be able to uphold that.”