Fatal and Dangerous currents on Maryland and Delaware Beaches

OCEAN CITY, Md. – With the summer season for resort towns like Ocean City coming to an end, staffing for beach patrol is limited. This causes serious water safety issues with Ocean City Beach Patrol with only thirty guard stations, and having to make over 380 rescues during the Labor Day weekend.

Beach Patrol Captain Butch Ardin commented that, “We have heard reports of drownings in New Jersey yesterday, Delaware and even possibly in Virginia,” Captain Arbin said. “So the conditions were treacherous up and down the East Coast.”

After reports of a missing swimmer found dead Monday in Rehoboth Beach, visitors from Ocean City, like Thomas Hook, are worried about getting caught in a rip current.

Hook said it’s happened to him before and had to fight for his life to get out of it.

“I was stuck in there and everybody kept pointing to go sideways so I went sideways and I sort of got out of it at that point, but it’s scary.”

Captain Arbin says that in no way should people treat the Ocean as any typical backyard pool because it is more Dangerous than people realize.

“They don’t understand the ocean, they don’t check in with the guard, so they go in the Ocean just like it is a pool and not understanding the currents and the changing environment of the Ocean.”

Now not everybody who needs a rescue is in danger of drowning, but some could be, especially when “we are this spread out, we really can’t do effectively the first two parts because if a guard gets off their stand to tell somebody something, that leaves a half mile of beach uncovered and we can’t do that,” Captain Arbin said.

“In fact, people will go in, get rescued and then people sitting beside them on the beach will go back onto the same spot and have to be rescued because they are not aware of their environment.”

Michael Skowronski is an experienced swimmer. He has this advice for identifying riptides.

“Scan the waves to see where they are breaking and I look for where the water is basically flowing back into the Ocean,” Skowronski said. “It’s quite noticeable, you can see the rips if you are looking and standing there you can see that white water flowing out well beyond where all the other waves are breaking.”