Rescuing An Unconscious Surfer

Today we're going to learn about rescuing an unconscious surfer. The first person that's going to get to someone in need is just a normal person like a surfer. I've been in the water so many times like and witnessed so many different rescues from surfer to surfer or like surfer to swimmer and it happens all year long on the north shore especially in the winter time. All right Moana how many years has it been since you did junior guards? Probably 10. 10 years. All right well the rescues have gotten more intense but they are the same technique so you're going to demonstrate and show us how to do the unconscious rescue. Remember that? Yes I do. All right John's in the water one of our guards and he's waiting for you. All right let's go rescue John. Okay so Moana is going to paddle up to the unconscious surfer. Excellent signaling. She's going to flip her board upside down putting the board between her and the patient. She's going to grab his arms pull him all the way over to the rail hits the armpits flip the board over now she's trying to secure him onto the board. Excellent. Yeah it's so much easier to slide a body backwards instead of trying to push him forward. Yeah. Oh there she goes. Perfect. All right so this is the point where you hope that you know you're signaling somebody on the beach a bystander is going to be able to help meet you at the shoreline. Paddle, paddle, paddle, paddle. Okay ready? Grab the tail of the board. Ready? One, two, three, up. Perfect. Okay on three. One, two, three. Okay now hold on we'll log roll them. Okay one, two, three. Back some sand. Perfect and then right into compressions. When that situation presents itself focus on getting them safely on the board on the beach back to the lifeguards. I was like oh man this would be so hard right now if like there was waves and there was a strong current and this body is like so heavy when the time does come for me to use this. There's no like practice runs it's like I gotta lock in. Rescuing someone in open water can be challenging so let's review this technique. Step one is to signal to the beach when you first spot trouble. You want help on the way as soon as possible. Step two is to paddle alongside the swimmer and direct your board back towards shore and flip it upside down. Step three pull the arms of the swimmer across the board so the rail is in their armpits. Step four while holding their hands in place flip the board over so their chest is now resting on top of your surfboard. Finally rotate their body in line with your board so that you can paddle towards safety. If a surfer falls and gets knocked unconscious there's a good chance the first person on scene will be a fellow surfer. Remember every second counts that's why signaling to the beach to get advanced care activated could make the difference of saving a life.