“While swimming in waves that didn’t appear large, I was caught in a rip current and pulled out into the ocean. Whenever I tried to swim back to reach the bottom, the current dragged me back out. I raised my hands, called out for help, and panicked as I realized I was going nowhere,” Svetlana Frolova said in a harrowing account of the lifesaving efforts of East Hampton Town lifeguards on Sunday.
A high rip current risk over the weekend was responsible for 137 ocean lifeguard saves (some preventive actions, some true saves) since last Thursday, according to Jeff Thompson, Amagansett’s chief lifeguard, who said 90 percent of those saves occurred on the stretch of beach in downtown Montauk that lifeguards call Hotel Row.
“In my 12 or 13 years of guarding it was the busiest weekend I’ve ever had,” Thomas Brierley, the town’s assistant chief lifeguard, said by phone on Tuesday evening. Mr. Brierley has been in Florida attending the national lifeguard championships this week.
He said an estimated 6,300 people were on the beach in Montauk last weekend.
At separate points over the weekend, Mr. Brierley said they had 12 people and then six “on the line” at once, referring to a lifesaving rope used to tow victims back to shore. It takes a team of lifeguards to pull groups back to shore safely.
According to beach safety information published online by the town, swells on Sunday neared six feet -- significantly larger than Saturday and Monday which topped out at close to three feet.
On Saturday, the town was flying a yellow flag, indicating that swimmers should exhibit caution. On Sunday, a green flag flew, but was replaced by a yellow flag later in the day.
“Conditions in that section of shoreline have been uncharacteristically conducive to the formation of large, powerful rip currents in recent days,” Mr. Thompson said in an email to Ms. Frolova on Monday. That email was shared with the East Hampton Town Board on Tuesday afternoon.
Mr. Brierley said Montauk has a sandbar, and with that sandbar, you will always get a rip tide. He called the “clamshell shoreline” the perfect conditions for a rip current every 100 to 150 yards.
Ms. Frolova credited three keen-eyed guards with spotting her from a distance and swimming out to her with a tow rope.
At a town board meeting on Tuesday, she recognized Capt. Charlie Goldsmith, Lt. Callum Hoepfner, and Greg Aivaliotis, a senior lifeguard, for saving her life.
“To a lifeguard, the rescue is the greatest reward,” Mr. Thompson said.
Indeed, Mr. Brierley said, the team is saving lives. “It’s a testament to Johnny Ryan Jr. and how we run our program. So many people have had a hand in it,” he said of Mr. Ryan, the town’s chief lifeguard, and of the group effort it takes to keep the community safe.
Anthony Ferrandino, the owner of Go Deep Montauk, a local fishing-lure maker, surfcaster, and beach watcher said this week that several guards stayed after hours over the weekend because of how many saves had been made during the day.
Two of them, Mr. Brierley and Frank Skibo, a guard at South Edison Beach in Montauk, plucked a mother and child out of the surf after following a Marine Patrol truck at high speed down the beach to another save.
“I look over my shoulder to the left, and I see three people in the rip,” Mr. Brierley said.
While responding to the two swimmers in distress, they found an additional swimmer -- a young man who had attempted to save the woman and child -- who needed rescuing himself.
Mr. Brierley said it took 10 minutes for him and Mr. Skibo to get the man to shore safely. “I’m a decent swimmer and I wasn’t moving,” Mr. Brierley said. He called the save his “best rescue in all my years.”
One of the hurdles to keeping people safe, Mr. Brierley said, is that lifeguards are off duty at 5 p.m. -- when a lot of people are still coming down to swim. While many guards stay behind on busier days, it is not mandated.
Mr. Brierley aims to change that for next year, saying that he hopes to keep guards on duty -- at least at the busiest stands -- until 6 p.m.
The save of the woman and her child and the young man all occurred after hours, Mr. Brierley said. On Tuesday, a save was made in Montauk at 5:15 p.m.
Many rescues take place outside protected areas, he added. East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue has guards and other first responders at the ready to respond to off-hours and out-of-season water emergencies all year long, but they are not stationed at the beaches.
“Lifeguards are putting their lives at risk every time they go out there,” Mr. Ferrandino said by phone on Tuesday.
He said the risk, as he sees it, is twofold. On the one hand, dangerous rip currents have been present frequently this summer. On the other, people unfamiliar with the ocean may not know how dangerous the waters can be.
“When you grow up out here you know . . . how to read the water,” Mr. Ferrandino said.
Many people simply don’t know the dangers of the ocean, Mr. Brierley said. “You’re at the mercy of Mother Nature. You’ve got to be very careful.”
Suffolk County’s Office of Emergency Management warned of a high rip current risk over the weekend, and high save counts were widely reported across the South Shore.
If you encounter a rip current, do not panic. Let the current pull you out and then swim parallel to the shore. Attempt to swim to shore if you no longer feel the rip current pushing against you. Swim in areas protected by lifeguards and, if you find yourself in trouble, pump your arms up in the air to alert people on shore that you need help.
