SEA ISLE, N.J. — Sunday morning started off as a nice and
uneventful day at the shore, just a little windy. The big story on
the front page of the Press of Atlantic City was about
which pizza was the best on Ocean City’s boardwalk.
After interviewing vacationers eating slices at JoJo’s, Roma,
Big Slice, Primavera, Pisa, Angelo’s and Manco & Manco (changed
from Mack & Manco this season after a split between the
grandkids of Vince Manco and Tony Mackrone, the two guys who
started tossing pies on the boardwalk in 1956), the newspaper’s
front-page investigative report concluded that “the best pizza is a
matter of taste.”
Another front-page article reported on how much money the local
shore towns raked in last year from parking meters and electronic
kiosks — $2.6 million in Ocean City, $134,000 in Sea Isle,
etc.
The news became more serious later in the day when Khitan
Devine, a 10-year-old Philadelphia boy, waded into the ocean with
his family in Atlantic City at around 7 p.m., an hour after the
lifeguards had left the beach.
About 10 minutes later, he was gone, pulled under the water by a
strong rip current.
Three days later in Margate, a beach town a few miles south of
Atlantic City, Khitan’s body was found by lifeguards who spotted it
in the late morning, just a few yards from shore.
There are two lessons.
First, it’s not safe to swim at unguarded beaches. Atlantic
City’s Beach Patrol chief, Rod Aluise, said he could remember only
one drowning in the past 30 years, with millions of visitors per
year, while lifeguards were on duty.
Second, learn about rip currents and what to do if you’re caught
being pulled away from the beach.
“When people think about natural hazards, they usually think
about tornadoes or hurricanes or earthquakes. But there is another
natural hazard that takes more lives in an average year in the
United States than any of those — rip currents,” reported science
writer Cornelia Dean in a New York Times article on June
7, 2005, “Stalking a Killer That Lurks a Few Feet Offshore.”
Dean reported that “rip currents pull about 100 panicked
swimmers to their deaths” each year in American waters. “According
to the United States Lifesaving Association, lifeguards pull out at
least 70,000 Americans from the surf each year, 80 percent from rip
currents.”
While “savvy surfers rely on rip currents for free rides beyond
the surf zone,” explained Dean, “unwary bathers may wade into the
water only to find themselves suddenly swept away.”
The way to save yourself? “If they keep their heads and swim
across the current, parallel to the shore, they can escape its grip
and make their way back to the beach,” explained Dean. “But
swimmers who try to fight rip currents quickly exhaust themselves
and may drown.”
Rip currents can flow at speeds of up to 4 mph, up to 6 feet per
second, or even faster, reported Dean. “You would have to be a good
swimmer to swim 2 miles per hour, and you cannot do that very
long,” explained Dr. Edward Thornton of the Naval Postgraduate
School in Monterey, Calif.
And so, to stay alive, the answer is to not panic, swim parallel
to the beach, and keep an eye out for approaching sharks — or just
stay in the casino at the Joker Poker machines.
