THE HARBOR COLUMN:Water on the memory

Ahoy.

This Saturday is my 30th high school reunion, and I cannot believe that it has been that long since graduation. I graduated the bicentennial year (1976) from Newport Harbor High School, and my senior year is now a blur. I do remember that I went a half a day to school, and then in the afternoons I attended the fire academy at Santa Ana Fire Station No. 9.

You might remember fire station No. 9 on Dyer Road off the 55 Freeway. The station was a landmark with the concrete burn tower that we used for training. I would notice the freeway traffic back up as rubber-neckers would slow down to see our tower or oil pit training burns. Once in a while, someone would stop on the freeway to take a photograph only to realize it was a training burn.

Speaking of amateur photographers, the Disneyland Hotel contracted with me years later to train the hotel’s lifeguards with advanced skills and perform a water-safety assessment. I once noticed a sea of cameras along the wrought-iron fence as I was teaching the lifeguards how to extract a person from the main pool using a backboard. Hence, people were hoping for that million-dollar shot.

But I digress. Also during my senior year, I was hired by the new Woodbridge Village Assn., where I worked as a lifeguard and sailing instructor. At that time, only phase one out of four phases was under construction; one of the two lakes was open and about a dozen pools were finished. It was a great time working there and still hard to believe it was 30 years ago.

So, it has been three decades that I have been working in the aquatic field, and now I know why I am starting to pluck a few gray hairs from my head.

How unusual to have a drowning in Newport Harbor, and especially since reports are that the 78-year-old Palm Desert man was not able to pull himself out of the water. It would seem that someone would have heard him if he yelled for help at any hour of the day or night in the harbor.

This unfortunate death does pose a very important question for everyone to ask themselves. If you fell into the harbor then how would you get out, especially for someone who cannot pull himself up a high dock?

Alaska has a similar problem with people falling off the high wharves and then drowning before they can be pulled from the water. Of course, the northern cold water rapidly speeds up hypothermia, leaving a person unable to grasp any objects for support. The solution was and is to install ladders.

Look around the waterfront property and see how you could get out of the water. Is there a shore beach close by, or is it a high sea wall? How low is the dock to the water surface for you to pull yourself up and out? How would you help someone out of the water if you saw him or her fall in?

In my Sept. 15 column, I related an incident about a boater who fell in the water while stepping from their boat onto the dock. You might recall the woman panicked when she hit the water and her husband was useless helping her out of the water. So I walked over to her and simply reached down, grabbing her arms, crisscrossing them. While pulling her up, I spun her around 180 degrees to sit her easily up on the dock.

If you are on a boat, drop the swim ladder, and this will work too for someone falling off a dock if a boat is docked nearby. Waterfront property owners, however, should consider installing a permanent ladder if there is no means for someone to get out of the water. The life that you save just might be your own.

Remember to tune in to the No. 1 boating talk radio show in the nation at noon every Saturday. “Capt. Mike Whitehead’s Boathouse Radio Show” is on KCBQ-AM (1170) and can be heard online at www.boathouseradio.com.

Safe voyages.