Lifeguard

A lifeguard supervises the safety and rescue of swimmers, surfers, and other water sports participants such as in a swimming pool, water park, or beach. Lifeguards are strong swimmers and trained in CPR/AED first aid, certified in water rescue using a variety of aids and equipment depending on requirements of their particular venue. In some areas, lifeguards are part of the emergency services system to incidents and in some communities, the lifeguard service also carries out mountain rescues, or may function as the primary EMS provider.

Lifeguarding role

Responsibilities

A lifeguard is responsible for the safety of people in an area of water, and usually a defined area immediately surrounding or adjacent to it, such as a beach next to an ocean or lake. The priority is to ensure no harm comes to users of the area for which they are responsible. Lifeguards often take on this responsibility upon employment, although they can also be volunteers.

The conditions resulting in drowning are summarized by the 'drowning chain' in which each link can lead directly to an incident, or contribute to a succession of links. It consists of lack of education about water safety or local conditions, a lack of safety advice (for example, about rip currents at a beach) a lack of protection (like no flotation device for a weak swimmer), lack of safety supervision, or an inability to cope with conditions (strong surf with a weak swimmer).

Beach Patrol

Beach Patrol is a half-hour television series airing on Tru TV. The show features lifeguards and police working together to apprehend criminals and save lives.

Each of the program's four seasons have focused on a different city San Diego, Miami, Honolulu and Huntington Beach.

Format

The basic outline of the show was based on real life moments of lifeguard and other beach patrol work on rescues and arrests. Although there was not much of the footage featured in the show that involved arrests, most of the footage featured rescues and finding missing personnel. The show runs for 30 minutes. A Beach Patrol special called The Best of Beach Patrol ran for 60 minutes. It was only within the San Diego series. The show was originally created and developed in the mid-nineties for the Fox-TV Station Group (FTSP/Foxlab), the same outfit that brought the airwaves COPS and America's Most Wanted. Beach Patrol was the brainchild of an executive at the division who was looking for a companion show for COPS which, ironically, it became, a decade later on another cable network.