Officials in the Panhandle are coming under fire after 18 people drown in four months. Critics say more lifeguards are urgently needed.
By JULIE HAUSERMAN
Published July 20, 2003
SEAGROVE BEACH - The tourists are coming, bumper to bumper, down rural U.S. 331 toward the Panhandle. With kids in the back and bikes tied on the car, they are set for a week on some of Florida's most gorgeous beaches.
They don't expect to die here.
But people are drowning off the Panhandle. In the past four months, 18 have died in rip currents. Dozens more have been rescued. On one awful day - June 8 - eight people died in Walton and Okaloosa counties alone.
"We've never had that many people die at once except in the 1940s when a bomb fell off an airplane and killed three people in a house," said Sgt. Dennis Wise of the Walton County Sheriff's Office.
The deaths left people shaking their heads over lost lives: A dentist from New Orleans, dead at 41. A former CNN producer, drowned at 60. A 15-year-old Alabama boy, who played on the high school football team but couldn't fight the swift rip current. Two young mothers who saved their children but died themselves.
Now, many are asking hard questions: Was this a freak of nature, or could deaths have been prevented if the Panhandle had more lifeguards? Did people ignore warnings of dangerous rip currents? Or were the warnings not good enough?
Some of the families who lost loved ones are mulling a lawsuit, saying Panhandle officials didn't adequately warn them. One Atlanta man who nearly drowned with his daughter off Pensacola Beach is so mad he will return this weekend to post handmade signs warning swimmers of the dangerous rip currents, commonly called riptides.
"We did everything we could," Wise said. "We were warning people, but they weren't listening."
The loudest condemnations are from out-of-town lifeguards, who say the Panhandle has a continuing problem with drownings and needs more beaches guarded by people trained in ocean rescues.
"We've been up there off and on for about two years now, trying to get those people to address their drowning situation," said Jim McCrady of Fort Lauderdale, president of the United States Lifesaving Association's southeast region.
McCrady said a review by his group shows "upwards of 40 drowning deaths since Jan. 1, 2000" in the Panhandle counties of Gulf, Bay, Walton, Okaloosa, Santa Rosa and Escambia.
The Panhandle has rip currents, but so do most other parts of Florida, including Pinellas beaches. This year, Pinellas has had just one drowning and three rescues.
McCrady's solution for the Panhandle's problem? More trained lifeguards.
"People recreate on beaches all over the world, and there aren't this many drownings," McCrady said."There are people who have labeled this area of the country the Drowning Capital of America."
This is the place that the state's largest landowner, the St. Joe Co., is marketing as Florida's Great Northwest, with new, upscale, picket-fence-lined beach towns. People are coming in droves - about 7-million visitors each year.
McCrady says the area shouldn't rely so much on warning flags on the beaches. A red flag means stay out of the water, yellow means caution and green or blue (depending on the county) means it's safe.
"A lot of us don't know what the flags mean - sorry," said Dennie Amos of Indiana, whose 31-year-old daughter, Marla Amos, died June 8 near Destin as she saved her son.
The flag system can be inconsistent. On a recent day in Seagrove Beach in Walton County, two different flags flew on the same stretch of beach - one blue (safe) and one yellow (caution). It was definitely rough enough to be a yellow flag day, said officials from the South Walton Fire Department, who are in charge of posting the flags. They say private property owners sometimes fly the wrong color.
Chris Brewster, a California lifeguard and beach-safety expert with the United States Lifesaving Association, wrote reports in 2002 and 2003 for governments in Pensacola and Destin. His recommendation: Stop relying so much on flags and get more lifeguards. Put signs out, advising people to swim only at guarded beaches.
The rash of drownings has tourism officials on the spot. Just two years ago, Panhandle shark attacks drew national headlines and news crews. The latest drownings popped up on national television, too. Like the small-town mayor in the movie Jaws, officials are trying to reassure tourists.
"We do have safe beaches, if people will go to a beach that is serviced by a lifeguard," said Nancy Hussong of the Emerald Coast Convention and Visitor's Bureau.
This part of Florida is home to long, empty stretches of wild beach, as well as spring break meccas like Pensacola and Panama City Beach. In Destin, families pack into shoulder-to-shoulder condominiums. Uncrowded state park beaches feature "Swim at your own risk" signs.
Tourism boosters call this part of the coast "Florida's best-kept secret." Sandee LaMotte, 48, of Atlanta says Florida's best-kept secret has its own secret: drownings.
LaMotte's 60-year-old husband, Larry, was in knee-deep water with the couple's two children June 8. As a producer for CNN, he had been in many dangerous parts of the world. But he died on a beautiful beach on a clear summer day.
The couple's 12-year-old son, Ryan, was in shallow water when a rip current caught his "boogie board" and sucked him offshore. Larry tried to save Ryan, but started to drown. A 36-year-old Arkansas man, Ken Brindley, saved the boy, but died trying to save Larry. Brindley left a widow and two small children.
"My children don't have a father, and another family doesn't have a father, because I didn't know it was dangerous. That's because they didn't tell me," said LaMotte, who has visited the Panhandle for a decade.
A red flag was posted on the beach, but LaMotte thought it "was aimed at those little surfer dudes that ran past me to catch the waves. I didn't know I was in danger in knee-deep water."
Rip currents form when water that's captured between a sand bar and the beach tries to get back out to sea. The water runs along the sandbar until there's a break, then funnels out in a fast-moving, often narrow, channel.
Surfers ride rip currents offshore. Lifeguards use rips to reach victims. But people who are unfamiliar with the phenomenon often panic, unaware that if they relax and move parallel to the shore they will eventually get out of the fast-moving current and back to the beach.
Rip currents are responsible for about 150 deaths every year in the United States. In Florida, they kill more people annually than thunderstorms, hurricanes and tornadoes combined, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
"I grew up around here, and every day after school I'd be in the gulf," said Sgt. Rick Hord of the Okaloosa Sheriff's Office. "I kept wondering how it is that these deadly currents only drown the tourists. It's panic that kills, it's not the current that kills. I think all this talk about killer currents becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy."
At least three of the 18 death involved locals.
Todd Farmer, a father from Columbus, Ga., said he didn't take the red flags seriously until July 2.
"From the beach, it doesn't look all that bad," Farmer, 40, said.
He paddled a kayak into the surf when he saw that his daughter and seven other teens were struggling off Panama City Beach. Caught in the rip current and heavy waves, the kayak tipped over, the kids kept falling off, and they barely made it to shore alive.
"A lot of people think they will be able to see a rip current," Farmer said. "You think it's going to be like rapids or something, but you can't see it."
The recently widowed Sandee LaMotte is on a mission now to persuade Panhandle counties to make the beaches safer.
"I think by the time they pulled Larry out, they'd pulled out 21 people," LaMotte said. "As I was driving back from the hospital, there were two more ambulances going the other direction. I said: If this is such a problem, why don't people know? And the deputy looked at me and said: "Walton County has decided they don't have the money for lifeguards."'
"They want to make all their money off us," she said, "but they don't want to protect us."
This is a tough time to tell any Florida county to take on a new expense. The state is asking local governments to do more with less.
Some Panhandle beaches in Okaloosa, Escambia, Santa Rosa, and Bay counties have lifeguards, or beach vendors who also keep an eye on swimmers.
Some of the counties are adding more flags and rescue equipment. They hand out fliers and post messages at hotels and toll booths to tell people what the flag system means. Hotel televisions carry public service videos. And now, the state Health Department plans to study the drownings to see if there are patterns.
"I was down at the beach at Fort Walton, watching the deputies go along there, blowing sirens, getting people out of the water, and I'll be darned if these people from out of state would just go back in the water," said state Sen. Durrell Peaden, a Crestview Republican who represents the area. "I don't know what we could do to ensure personal responsibility."
In Volusia County, which has severe rip currents, crowded beaches, and the best-regarded lifeguard system in Florida, people who won't heed warnings are arrested. Home to popular Daytona Beach, Volusia spends $7-million a year to guard 47 miles of coast, said Jim Wooden, Volusia's deputy beach chief.
Volusia's lifeguards are sworn police officers, and they are also trained as emergency response technicians. They have jet skis and boats and can zip immediately to a swimmer in distress. They do 2,500 rescues a year.
"If we didn't have people on the beach watching people, we'd have drownings all over the place," Wooden said. "The difference between the Panhandle and us is that we've always put safety first.
"It's their responsibility to protect people when they go in the water," Wooden said. "If they are not going to protect them, don't let them in the water."
Peaden said the Panhandle counties are doing what they can, but agrees "lifeguards are the answer."
"If I came down on vacation," Peaden said, "and the first thing I heard was: "Don't go in the water,' it wouldn't help tourism and it wouldn't help me enjoy my vacation, either."
Wooden calls the number of drownings in the Panhandle "unbelievable."
"Typically," Wooden said, "we'll have two or three drownings in a year."
"They have a problem up there, and it's a problem that every other major beach has had to face headon.
"I mean, people are struggling," Wooden said. "They are drowning. They are going to lose their lives, and all of a sudden, some guy shows up that's suntanned, bleach blond hair, and he says: "Hey, grab onto my buoy,' The next thing they know, they are standing up on the beach, shaking the lifeguard's hand, thanking him for saving their life.
"That is the difference between their beach and our beach. Their beach, they are lying there with a blanket over them."
Most victims were visitors to the Panhandle
The 18 Panhandle drowning victims since March, with hometowns and (where they drowned):
March 18: Blake Bennett, 21, Pendleton, Ind. (Panama City Beach)
March 27: Cody Kennedy, 19, Milton (Pensacola Beach)
April 7: Stephen Cox, 37, McDonough, Ga. (Pensacola Beach)
May 9: Dwayne Felton, 41, unknown (Perdido Key)
May 10: Douglas Reiss, 34, Brewton, Ala. (Navarre Beach)
May 11: Shaka Ellis, 15, Montgomery, Ala. (Pensacola Beach)
June 8: Larry LaMotte, 60, Atlanta (Walton County)
June 8: Ken Brindley, 36, Conway, Ark. (Walton County
June 8: Robert Hehmeyer, 57, St. Louis (Okaloosa County)
June 8: Marla Amos, 31, Sellersburg, Ind. (Okaloosa County)
June 8: Curtis Cohran, 53, Santa Rosa Beach (Walton County)
June 8: David Che-Hsien Huang, 40, Houston (Walton County)
June 8: Marietta Yakstis, 62, Goreville, Ill. (Walton County)
June 8: Shalyn Cuadrado, 32, Metarie, La. (Walton County)
June 9: David Victor Dotson, 66, Milton (Pensacola Beach)
July 2 Molly Bryant, 15, Trussville, Ala. (Bay County)
July 2: William E. Jones, 54, Jonesboro, Ga. (Bay County)
July 13: Walter Parker, Jr., 33, Selma, Ala. (Panama City Beach)
