Town officials try to make beach safer after false alarm

SWAMPSCOTT – A false report of a swimmer being swept off a sandbar at Eiseman’s Beach on Puritan Road last Sunday prompted the Board of Selectmen to look for better ways for beach lifeguards to communicate with swimmers.The report led to a search that ultimately determined it was a false alarm, according to Coast Guard Public Affairs Specialist Ross Ruddell.The Coast Guard even sent a helicopter to the scene. “There was nothing substantial to the whole thing,” said Ruddell.Selectmen Vice Chairman David Van Dam, who said he was at the scene at Eiseman’s Beach on Sunday, said the incident began around 2 p.m. and lasted until 5 p.m.”The response was quick and appropriate,” he said Thursday. “Potentially they may have known within that three-hour period of time that it was a false alarm, but they could have just wanted to make sure there was no body.”The Board of Selectmen discussed Wednesday what could be done to make the beach safer.”We are continuing to make some improvements with our lifeguards,” said Town Administrator Thomas Younger. “We actually had discussed increasing ways that the lifeguards could communicate with the swimmers.”Van Dam said the meeting “was just so we can make sure the lifeguards have the proper equipment they need to serve the public for their safety and for everyone else.”Younger said he held a debriefing meeting after the incident “to find anything we can improve on” with the harbormaster, police chief, fire chief and Recreation Director Danielle Strauss, whose department oversees the lifeguards.Younger said giving the lifeguards air horns as well as extra binoculars were being discussed as a way to “get info out to bathers more efficiently.”Van Dam brought up a concern during the meeting that he wasn’t sure if lifeguards had whistles. Van Dam said he is a frequent Swampscott beachgoer and he has “never heard them blow a whistle,” but admitted that he wasn’t sure of the protocol that would warrant that action.But Strauss said they do have whistles. “Yes, the lifeguards definitely have whistles,” she said. “Now they are equipped with binoculars and air horns, because a swimmer would have never heard a whistle on that particular day.”Strauss added that the lifeguard who dealt with Sunday’s incident “totally followed all procedures and did what he was supposed to do.” Strauss said in seven years in her position, her department has never seen an incident like they did on Sunday, calling it “extremely unusual.””Kudos to our Recreation Department, the lifeguards, the harbormaster and the Coast Guard,” said Younger. “They were all really efficient in doing the search and coming to the determination that nothing had occurred.”Kait Taylor may be reached at [email protected].