Winter Workout : Rough, Cold Surf, Fewer Stations Keep Lifeguards Busy in Off Season

Lifeguards who staff the city’s beaches year-round find it ironic that they are often asked what they do in winter.

Brant Bass, a San Diego city lifeguard for 12 years, insists that “the most hazardous rescue work we do is in the winter months.”

Bass, 30, is one of 35 full-time lifeguards who work year-round. Thirty-five other lifeguards are available on a part-time basis, and 80 are added for the summer months.

The problems of rougher and colder winter surf--the average winter water temperature is 57 degrees--is compounded by the fact that not all lifeguard stations open in the summer are staffed in the winter.

Skeleton Crew

“We’re down to a skeleton crew,” Bass said, so lifeguards on hand have longer stretches of coastline to watch.

Bass started as summer lifeguard while attending college and later decided to make it a profession.

Most lifeguards were athletes--usually swimmers--in their high school and college days, and they remain in top physical shape.

The image of lifeguards baking in beach chairs and watching women cavort in the sun is dissolved when Bass tells of the day two summers ago when 14 lifeguards at San Diego’s Ocean Beach made 141 rescues.

In addition to their water rescues, San Diego’s lifeguards are considered the tops in the nation for cliff rescues, he said.

Despite the risks, few lifeguards are killed on the job, Bass said.

“The chances of being killed are probably pretty slim,” he said. “It’s only those who don’t know what they’re doing, and they’re weeded out early in their career.”

However, Bass said the injury rate is high, most of it from back and limb injuries.

“The percentage of injury time off is higher than (for) police and fire (personnel),” he said.

Bass said most rescues stem from people “not knowing what their limitations are,” and many are alcohol-related.

Lifeguard Darrell Esparza agreed.

“Some people just don’t have common sense,” Esparza said.

Esparza and Bass said the job of saving lives is often thankless.

“I don’t really feel appreciated by the public,” Bass said. “It’s not really necessary to have that, but so many times you make a rescue and people don’t even say thank you. If anything, they are put out by having to give their name and address and they’re embarrassed.”

Despite that, Esparza, 31, has enjoyed his 13 years as a lifeguard.

“I love my job,” he said. “I show up in a bathing suit when everyone else has to show up in a suit and hard shoes.

“In the business world, things stay pretty much the same. Here, conditions change every day. You never know what’s going to happen or when it’s going to happen.”

Attracted by Uncertainty

The uncertainty of the job also attracted Jill Murray, who worked three summers as a seasonal guard and then was hooked. She has been on the city staff for eight years.

“I see it as a profession because it’s growing,” she said. “It’s not just the suntanned lifeguard doing something in the summer.

“It’s hard to break the image of the sitting out in the sun, getting a tan and checking out chicks. There’s that element too . . . but people don’t see behind the scenes.”

Murray said she sometimes comes to the beach on her days off but has a hard time relaxing.

“I always end up watching the water.”