PANAMA CITY BEACH — Joe Cocco still runs to Pineapple Willie’s and back to the M.B. Miller County Pier, just like he did Aug. 3, 2008.
On that day, Cocco, a captain with the Panama City Beach Fire Department, returned to the pier to find a commotion, and then he saw a body rolling in the surf. He and others pulled the man’s body from the surf and tried to revive him, but it was too late.
“It always has been an effect on me, anytime you see somebody drown out here,” Cocco said.
The man on whom Cocco helped perform CPR that day was visiting from his Georgia home. His twin daughters had gotten too deep and been pulled out into the Gulf of Mexico, according to a police report, and he went out to rescue them.
They got back to the sand safely; it’s not clear how. But, it wasn’t a lifeguard that brought them it; there are no lifeguards at the county pier.
Hot spots
The county pier is one of a few hot spots for deaths and water rescues. At least four people have drowned at the county pier in the past five years, according to an examination of Panama City Beach Police records.
Like most of the people who drowned in the Gulf in recent years, all were were from out of state, according to the records and reports reviewed by The News Herald. Three of the four went into the water between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. At least one died under yellow flags.
A few miles down the beach at the Russell-Fields City Pier, the only lifeguards on the 27-mile stretch of sand in Bay County have been keeping watch over a primary zone of 1,600 linear feet of the beach from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. during the tourist season since 2009, according to Will Spivey, director of the PCB Aquatics Center, which provides the lifeguards.
The last drowning report The News Herald could find for the city pier was in 2006. Since the lifeguards have been stationed at the city pier, there have been rescues, including several already this season, but no one has drowned, Spivey said.
“They don’t have drownings when you have a lifeguard,” Cocco said. “When the lifeguard is on duty, have you ever heard of somebody drowning? I haven’t.”
‘No doubt’
If that sounds far-fetched — that lifeguards are 100 percent successful at preventing drowning deaths — consider a study published in 2001 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Injury Prevention (CDC). The study said some estimates put the chance of drowning on a beach protected by lifeguards at less than one in 18 million.
As an example of the effectiveness of lifeguards in preventing drowning deaths, the CDC study pointed to several beach communities in the United States.
A beach near San Diego created a lifeguard service after 13 people drowned in a single day in 1918. The same beach drew 15 million people annually at the time of the study, but the average number of yearly drowning deaths at beaches under lifeguard protection was between zero and one.
“There is no doubt that trained, professional lifeguards have had a positive effect on drowning prevention in the United States,” the study says.
Why not guard?
Cocco argues there is no reason to not have lifeguards stationed at the county pier.
“We have the money and we have to spend it on the life safety of people,” Cocco said. “We’re going to invite tourists to come here, spend millions of dollars, but we’re not going to protect them when they go in the water.”
Officials have discussed staffing the beach with lifeguards over the years, but officials with the Tourist Development Council (TDC) and the Bay County Commission do not support the idea.
“To say that we’re opposed to it doesn’t mean we’re not doing anything,” said Mike Thomas, who sits on the County Commission and the TDC.
The first reason officials cite is prohibitive cost. City, county and TDC officials said they are aware of a cost study conducted years ago, but there was confusion among officials about which of those entities actually studied the cost.
County officials said the TDC did a study, the TDC said Panama City Beach has and PCB said an independent study was conducted years ago.
The News Herald was unable to obtain any details about the study or its findings. It’s not clear what it would cost to staff the entire beach with lifeguards, but Cocco, who also was aware of the study, said it would certainly be “in the millions of dollars.”
Alternatives to lifeguards
The TDC collected about $15 million in taxes last year, TDC President Dan Rowe said, and spends it to promote the beach and keep the sand nice. But, Florida law prohibits governments from spending tourism development tax dollars on public safety, so they don’t pay for lifeguards.
TDC dollars can be spent on public information, which the TDC does a lot of, Thomas and Rowe are quick to point out. They distribute literature to resorts and hotels on the beach explaining the flag warning systems and the dangers of rip currents and how to escape if you get in one.
When double red flags fly, the TDC pays for a plane to fly up and down the beach pulling a banner warning against going in the water. This year, they put stickers with information on the flag warning system and rip current survival on the blue trash cans that dot the beach.
“We do believe that people need to be aware of the flag system [and rip currents], which is why we put the stickers on the trash cans,” Rowe said.
Thomas points out that business along the sand could hire their own lifeguards, but he doesn’t think the government should require them to.
An alternative might be to create a special taxing districting on the island to pay for lifeguards, but “I don’t think the people in Callaway and Lynn Haven want their money to go to lifeguards,” he said.
“Nobody wants anybody to come down here and drown,” Thomas said. “You can educate them (tourists) the best you can, and that’s what I think we’re doing.”
The flag warning system works, Beach and Surf Patrol supervisor Carol Wagner said, but only for the people who pay attention. “Some people seem not to pay attention,” she said.
It’s not like the TDC’s hands are tied. All it would take to spend TDC money on lifeguards is a finding by the county that lifeguard activities can be classified as public information, which is how Walton County’s TDC pays for lifeguards, Rowe said.
Lifeguards and liability
Once lifeguards are on the beach, the entity that pays for them is exposed to lawsuits, Thomas said.
Zach Taylor, a civil trial attorney who represents plaintiffs in liability lawsuits agreed, but the county would be liable only in the event the lifeguards were improperly trained or hired. Essentially, if they do their job correctly, they are no more liable than other county employee, Taylor said.
“That’s the same liability you’re going to face for hiring a librarian at the library,” Taylor said.
Even if the county were to lose a liability lawsuit, the amount of damages that can be awarded to a plaintiff in a successful civil suit against a government or municipal entity is capped by Florida law at $200,000.
Doug Sale, the attorney who represents the city of Panama City Beach and the TDC, declined to comment.
Most popular beach
When water moves through a pier, it creates currents that can be dangerous and unpredictable, said Wagner, who has patrolled the beach for 17 years; The county pier has always had a rip current, and so has the city pier.
“The power of the rip currents is the same; the frequency of the rip currents is the same,” Wagner said. “The difference is there’s somebody down there” at the city pier.
The county pier is the most popular publically accessible area on the beach, at least in part because of the parking, Wagner said. The second most popular? The city pier.
“Before you had lifeguards at the city pier you had drownings at the city pier,” Wagner said.
Cocco thinks the TDC is losing too many word-of-mouth referrals from the families who go home without a loved one; drowning deaths cannot be good for the tourism industry, he said.
And he’s confident officials can figure out a way to save lives if they get together.
“If you have that many people coming, we’ve got together with the TDC, the county officials, the city officials, and come up with a game plan,” Cocco said. “This beach has the money. It all depends on where we want to spend it.
“There was an article the other day about BP money, right? They want to put more ballparks at Frank Brown Park. That’s a good idea, but you know what? A little bit better, I think, is let’s look at the life safety needs of this beach. We have got to turn it around.”