Sixteen local surfers have picked up basic skills to help them save lives in a free training session at Mollymook Surf Club.
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“This number is excellent, a high turnout indicating great community spirit,” said Wollongong instructor Stuart Massey from Surf Life Saving NSW, who conducted the session.
Harry Nightingale, demolition labourer-turned-lifeguard 18 years ago at the age of 37, also explained his insights to participants from his rescue experiences at Bondi.
Organisers were impressed, especially when the course – Surfers Rescue 24/7 – had been tried at other venues previously with limited success.
“The idea is to keep it simple, to encourage people to believe they can help someone in trouble,” Mr Massey told the group.
“We’ll teach you how to approach a victim in the surf, so you don’t become a victim yourself.”
Today by very sad coincidence came the news in Victoria of a 13-year-old girl who died trying to rescue her little brother, who was struggling in rough water at a beach near Wonthaggi in Gippsland.
Board riders and other surf craft users are the front line at unpatrolled beaches, often helping swimmers to shore or assisting injured surfers at remote breaks or reefs.
“A lot of people don’t know what to do, so faced with an incident, they do nothing,” Mr Massey said.
“Sometimes they fear they will do harm but if the patient is not breathing, without help, they’re dead.
“It’s all about keeping the patient breathing – breathing takes precedence over everything else.
“It’s just important to act quickly. If you’re not comfortable with giving mouth-to-mouth, and that’s OK, you can do CPR.”
There are alternatives in big waves: “Don’t battle through them back to shore – take the patient out to sea beyond the waves, signal and wait for help”.
Mr Massey took participants into the surf to perform a rescue safely with the board they normally use, then back in the clubhouse they learnt CPR basics and familiarised themselves with a defibrillator, used in the case of cardiac arrest.
“We’ll teach you how to approach a victim in the surf, so you don’t become a victim yourself.”
- Stuart Massey
Councillor Mark Kitchener also congratulated the participants and praised the good attendance.
He worked with Ivan Johnson from Mollymook Surf Lifesaving, Kurt Nyholm, Australian Lifeguard Service manager Brent Manieri (to engage Surf Life Saving NSW) and Shoalhaven City Council to organise the course.
Cr Kitchener, also a surfer, said the city has 109 beaches on its coastline and, where it is not practical for council to provide lifeguards, different strategies need to be considered to complement lifeguards on the locations they do patrol.
Mr Massey’s final anecdote to the group was about a friend who collapsed in a Gold Coast carpark after surfing, was subsequently shocked with a defibrillator 21 times in 42 minutes after going back repeatedly into cardiac arrest, was declared dead by a doctor but with the persistence one more time of a paramedic, revived.
What pulled the patient through was that within the first few seconds, the bloke who saw him collapse a few metres away immediately starting performing CPR to keep his blood circulating.
Today the victim is fit and healthy and regularly back in the surf.
“After today you can be certain that most people in the room will at some time in the future carry out a rescue,” Stuart Massey said.