Swimming Ban Narrowed To Dangerous Sandbar

by Tim Wood

            CHATHAM --- Clarifying action taken last week, the park and recreation commission Monday voted to narrow the ban on swimming at Lighthouse Beach to the area where a 46-year-old Groton man drown Aug. 31.

            Swimming is now prohibited at the sandbar approximately 2,200 feet south of the foot of the Lighthouse Beach stairs.  On the rest of the beach, which does not have the same dangerous currents and strong tidal action, swimming is allowed.

Temporary signs were placed near the sandbar where the drowning occurred Aug. 31.  Four large permanent signs are on order, and the temporary signs will remain in place for the rest of the season. TIM WOOD PHOTO

           The commission also voted unanimously to amend its rules and regulations to impose a $50 fine for swimming in closed areas, pending a public hearing likely to happen early next month.  The regulation allows lifeguards or the harbormaster to prohibit swimming in any location where conditions are unsafe.

            Last Friday the harbormaster department posted a dozen temporary signs on the upper beach around the sand spit, and four large, permanent signs have been ordered, according to Harbormaster Stuart Smith. The two-by-four-foot signs will read, “Stop.  Swimming Prohibited.  Life-threatening currents.”

            The ban will remain in place for the rest of the season.  Officials expect to develop a more comprehensive plan for the beach, most likely including expanded beach patrols, over the next few months.

            There was confusion over the vote taken by the commission last Wednesday to prohibit swimming at the popular beach following the drowning death of Thomas McDonald.  Some commissioners thought the vote applied to the entire beach, while others meant the ban to include only the area around the sandbar where McDonald and his 10-year-old daughter were when they were reportedly hit by a wave and swept out to sea by the outgoing tide.  A 17-year-old Harwich lifeguard, Tanya O’Donnell, saved the girl but was unable to rescue the father.

            Most of the 38 rescues performed by the harbor patrol along the beach this summer occurred near the sand spit, Smith said.  Until July, the sandbar was an island; when it connected to the main beach, it became a popular spot for beach strollers.  But when the tide begins to roll in over the 1,500-foot-long expanse of sand, conditions become dangerous, he said.

            “As soon as you enter the water, you get swept out. We were pulling people out of there left and right,” Smith said. Last week he measured the distance of the sandbar from the beach stairs at 3,170 feet, approximately three-fifths of a mile.

            Since 2001, a boat has patrolled the waters off Lighthouse Beach.  Following drownings in 2005 and 2006, a land-based ATV patrol was added to the beach, which this summer attracted an average of 700 to 800 people per day; on several days, the beach patrol estimated more than 1,000 people were on the beach.  Since 2001, there have been 321 rescues at the beach, as well as three drownings.

            Both patrols were on the scene Aug. 31.  The incident, however, showed their limitations, Smith said.  The staff member who was on the ATV, Paul Finn, has 20 years of lifeguarding experience at the Cape Cod National Seashore and is a Wellfleet paramedic.  “He’s the best-trained person we have,” Smith said. Yet it took him time to reach the scene on the ATV, and he was only able to rescue another person who had entered the water to help the 10-year-old.  Assistant Harbormaster John Summers, returning from a call at the new inlet to the north, was alone in the harbor patrol’s 1964 Boston Whaler and barely managed to pull McDonald on board, throw O’Donnell a life preserver and transport the unconscious father to rescue personnel waiting at the shore.      

            “For one person to cover a mile of beach, even on an ATV, is unreasonable,” Smith said.  “He might as well be in another state if [an emergency] is at the other end of the beach.”

            He’s working on recommendations to improve safety at the beach, which is likely to include a mix of approaches.

            “I think we need staff down there,” he said, possibly an additional boat patrol or another ATV.  Seasonal personnel cost about $8,000 per person, he said.  Traditional lifeguards may not work, however.  “There’s going to be many variations on how you want to approach this.” The swimming ban in the area where currents are most dangerous is the most effective strategy, he suggested, adding that having the flexibility to close other areas along the rapidly shifting shoreline when dangerous conditions develop, as allowed in the proposed new regulation, will help.

            “Everything is on the table” when it comes to discussions about the situation at Lighthouse Beach, said Chairman of Selectmen Sean Summers.

            “I don’t consider it a money issue,” he said. “I consider it a moral issue.  We will find the money and prioritize the resources to make sure we’re doing all we need to do on Lighthouse Beach.”

            The board with department heads and officials “take up all the matters of Lighthouse Beach,” from safety to parking, Summers said within the next few weeks.  “We’re pulling in all the players.”

            He agreed with Monday’s decision to limit the swimming ban.  Most of beach is safe, and while swimming may not be advisable in many areas, Summers believes “individuals should be given that choice.”

            B. Chris Brewster, president of the United States Lifesaving Association, said prevention is the best strategy.

            “A lot of what lifeguards do is simply assessing risk and advisory people, or using various techniques to encourage people to use the safest area at a given beach,” he said in a telephone interview from his home in San Diego.

            Smith noted that six large warning signs are in place on the beach, along with smaller signs warning of dangerous currents.  Anyone swimming on the beach would have to walk past several of them.

            Brewster is familiar with Lighthouse Beach and suggested placing lifeguards where swimming is safest to encourage beachgoers to swim in those spots.  Lifeguards also need to be trained to appropriate standards. “Otherwise it’s a recipe for failure,” he said.

            He agreed with Smith’s assessment that personnel on the beach need to be able to react quickly to changing conditions.

            “There needs to be some flexibility that allows you to react fairly quickly and not wait for the board to act to adjust the boundary of a prohibited area,” he said.

            At their emergency meeting Monday afternoon, commission members asked Smith to adjust the location of the 12 temporary signs to ensure that they could be seen from the lower beach.  If possible, a sign should also be placed at or on the sandbar, they said. They also requested that the small signs remain in place even when the permanent signs are installed.  The signs will remain up through the fall, Smith said.

            Patrols of the beach will continue on beach days as long as personnel are available, Smith said.  The harbor patrol boat is schedule to remain in service until Sept. 15.  Smith said a staff member was on the ATV Sunday, when there were a fair number of people on the beach, but not on Monday.

            Smith cautioned that conditions change so rapidly on the beach that plans made this fall or winter may not be effective next summer.

            “If will be so different next season you guys will have to meet and change everything,” he told the park commissioners.

            The proposed regulation reads, “No person shall enter the water in an area designed by the park and recreation commission as a no swimming zone.  If on any day a Chatham lifeguard/harbormaster determines that condition in an area normally open to swimming are unsafe, they may prohibit swimming at that time subject to the same fine for a violation.”

9/11/08