Happy summer, friends! You know I love the beach, but nothing freaks me out more than riptides.
With Hurricane Erin stirring up the East Coast, I called in my go-to water safety guy — Wyatt Werneth, spokesperson for the American Lifeguard Association. I call him the James Bond of lifeguards … because, well, he is.
Wyatt literally jumped off the beach in Cocoa Beach, Florida to join me on the show. His first tip? “Everywhere there’s a dip, there’s a rip.”
Translation: If the water keeps rushing in and your blanket, toys, and beach bag get soaked while everyone around you stays dry — there’s a riptide zone in front of you.
We also talked about what to do if you get caught up in a Riptide.
For years, the rule was: swim parallel to the shore. But Wyatt says research shows riptides don’t always pull straight out — sometimes going sideways or in circles.
Meaning? Swimming parallel may not always work. That’s why you may have also heard new advice: turn over, float, and indicate you need help.
Wyatt broke it down in a way we can all remember with the acronym RIP:
- R = Relax
- I = Indicate you need help (signal to others!)
- P = Parallel swim attempt, if you can
The most important? Relax and float. Don’t panic, conserve your energy, and let rescuers spot you.
“Your ability to swim could save your life.” – Wyatt Werneth
Wyatt also shared the success of his Drown Zero Project, which places life rings at every public beach access in Brevard County. The results? They went from 14 drownings a year to zero. Yes, ZERO. Chills, right? Why aren’t we doing this everywhere???
We even touched on the nationwide lifeguard shortage. Wyatt’s dream is that lifeguards are finally recognized as true professionals — “one of the few public safety groups whose very name says it all… Lifeguards guard lives.”
I don’t know about you, but I’ll never look at a day at the beach the same way again.
Big thanks to Wyatt for running off the beach for me one more time!
BTW as lifeguards go Wyatt Werneth is sumthin!
An experienced waterman with rescue swimmer and public safety diving as his core training, STUNTMAN / AVIATION and MARINE COORDINATOR / STUNT SAFETY and RIGGER Military/Public Safety Solutions Brevard County Sheriff’s Office aviation unit rescue swimmer. NASE Public Safety Diver Coordinator/Instructor. American Lifeguard Association National Spokes Person.
Until next time, remember Wyatt’s parting words: “Swim in front of the lifeguard, America.”
I think it would be beneficial to you to listen to this serious lifeguard wisdom in this podcast of my live conversation with Wyatt Werneth on The Debbie Nigro Show. If you’d rather read than listen the transcript of the audio is below.
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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT:
Back in action here on the Debbie Nigro Show. Happy summer vibes to you guys and we’re going to talk about riptides because they freak me out and they should be on your mind, especially this week as Hurricane Erin is moving its way causing commotion all along the East Coast and causing a lot of activity in the water and causing a lot of safety concerns like so bad that the American Lifeguard Association is like shouting from the
0:00:49
(Speaker 2)
rooftops, pay attention, you know, make sure you know in advance, make sure your family knows. I had this amazing guy on my show last year and I remembered that I had his cell number and he is the guy, okay? He’s the spokesperson for the American Lifeguard Association. I call him the James Bond of lifeguards. And well, you’re going to meet him on the show right this second. Let me just give you a little background. This guy, Wyatt, is like committed to making sure every person who steps near the water absolutely knows what to do and to you know thinks things long and hard before
0:01:31
(Speaker 2)
they make a move. So I just want to say thank you so much in advance Wyatt Werneth for joining me this morning at last minute and you’re the best.
0:01:39
(Speaker 1)
How are you? Great Debbie, thank you so much. We’re FOB, Fresh Off the Beach.
0:01:45
(Speaker 2)
I know you’re fresh. I don’t want to keep you too long. I know you did me a favor this morning, but I really needed you to stop by. Lifeguards save lives. I know you’re the king of getting that word out. I know that we’re supposed to help each other and watch out for each other at the beach, but I think individuals would like to know if you can share with us, how do you know if there’s a riptide out there
0:02:08
(Speaker 2)
besides the lifeguards putting up the flags? Is there a way a person can know?
0:02:12
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, Debbie, thanks again for having me on the show. I was really excited to get that message from this morning and like I said, I jumped off the beach. We were preparing for the hurricane, moving stations back because a surge is coming in a lot higher than normal. But yeah, and one of the ways I particularly today going out and I was informing people on the beach, an identifier is that area of the beach where you got your stuff, and the
0:02:39
(Speaker 1)
water comes surging in and gets everything wet. And the guys on both sides of you are laughing at you because they’re dry. You’re in the rip. That’s the area that you know, because when that water starts rushing back out, it’s gonna be strong and it’s gonna pull you.
0:02:52
(Speaker 1)
I was watching the kids’ toys and lawn chairs flop around in the surf this morning, and I would stop and make contact with the family and say, hey, listen, that’s a rip. Wow. Stay out of that area. Wow. And that’s one of the ways that we do it. All the other stuff that’s a little more scientific and lifeguards are trained to look at it
0:03:10
(Speaker 1)
by shine on the water and all this. What I just described is everywhere there’s a dip, there’s a rip.
0:03:16
(Speaker 2)
Oh, wow, that’s a really good thing to keep in mind. Thank you for that. happened to catch on the news up here in New York, a kind of new directive if you get caught in a riptide, as opposed to just, if you can keep your cool swimming horizontally out of it in either direction. They said you should turn over and float now and just wait till somebody finds you. I saw that on the news. I was like, what?
0:03:42
(Speaker 1)
Well, exactly. And what we found out over the years by throwing dyes in the water and mapping them with different types of devices, rip curtsers, they don’t go just straight out. And you’re swimming parallel left or right, you know, may not work in all of it. It’s kind of a general rule of thumb.
0:03:59
(Speaker 1)
But we also, you know, we came up with another slogan that’s RIP. R is relax, and then the I is indicate that you need help. And we’re going a step further with the I and indicating that you need help is what does someone do when they see
0:04:15
(Speaker 1)
someone in trouble on the beach? That person on the beach should hopefully have a flotation device, call 911, get a lifeguard involved, be near a lifeguard, because sometimes when you’re in the water you’re focusing on trying to get the key part of RIP and
0:04:29
(Speaker 1)
that’s swimming parallel and maybe it’s successful, maybe it’s not, but the most important thing is relax and indicate that you need help and attempt a parallel because we don’t, you don’t always know which way the current’s going, but if you activate the R in the I, you’re going to be okay. But let’s take that back a little bit. Learn to swim, America. Your ability to swim could save your
0:04:51
(Speaker 2)
life. Yes. Yes. I’m kind of blown away by how many people I’ve read that drowned this summer. Is it an excessively large number or is this typical? I mean everything from you know, Malcolm Jamal Warner on vacation to people Accidentally, you know at the beaches along the coast to children in the backyard pools I mean, I can’t breathe when I even read about this stuff. Is it increasing the number of drownings? I know this is a cause very close to your heart. I know you you have a whole organization called drown zero
0:05:25
(Speaker 1)
Well, thank you for that I’m gonna going to segue into Drown Zero here with this. But you know there’s always more and more people recreating in the water environments, open water pools, almost every year. I think we’re doing a better job at trying to not… I’ll give you an example for our community. Brevard County, 72 miles of ocean front, 210 beach access for the public to visit the beach.
0:05:51
(Speaker 1)
And any given day off season, only six of those protected by lifeguards. So we did come up with the Drown Zero Project. And the Drown Zero Projects, as we are placing stands that hold life rings, just like you see at the pool or on a boat. And making them available to people that I and the
0:06:09
(Speaker 1)
RIP indicating that you need help. These people are able to now grab flotation, go into the water, flotation’s proven to save life. And let me give you some statistics. We had a year before we enacted or erected the Drone Zero stations in our county parks and there were 50 of them. We’d already had a few. We went from 14 drownings, we now have these Drown Zero stations at every 210 beach accesses in the state of
0:06:36
(Speaker 1)
Brevard County and we’re the only county north and south of us with zero drownings.
0:06:41
(Speaker 2)
Oh man that is, I got chills, that’s awesome. Why can’t we spread this concept to other beaches? What’s holding it up? You know I
0:06:50
(Speaker 1)
think it’s still kind of relatively new. Yeah. I look at it and I compare it alongside like the first fire extinguishers, the 80s when they came out. Yeah. There’s something that people need to be educated on. You’re just like going back and trying to educate the world to learn how to swim. Sure.
0:07:07
(Speaker 1)
You know, it’s been taking us a while. We’ve done a lot better than we started out, and each year we get more and more, we reach more people with that message. And I think it’s just a matter of time. I’m seeing different variations of our Drone Zero project
0:07:19
(Speaker 1)
with rescue tubes and rings and life jackets. Something to provide a stop gap and a force multiplier where there’s no lifeguard all across America. So we are making a difference. So to answer that question about the drownings, I’m hoping in the near future we’re knocking it down. There’s not going to be as many
0:07:36
(Speaker 2)
drownings that we’ve had. Yeah, learn to swim, learn to swim. So you are something else. First of all, you’re probably going to be the last guy that’s run off a beach for me in some time. Yeah, I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure you’re it. I love you. Wyatt Werneth, I want you to know I can’t say your name three times fast, but I’m trying. But your background is amazing. Besides being an experienced waterman with rescue swimmer and public safety diving as your core training, you’re a stuntman, aviation and marine coordinator, stunt safety and rigor for the military and public safety solutions in Brevard County’s
0:08:10
(Speaker 2)
Sheriff’s Office Aviation Unit Rescue Swimmer. You’re a, what’s NASC Public Safety Diver Coordinator instructor? What’s NASC stand for? Well that’s just
0:08:19
(Speaker 1)
another branch like everyone’s familiar with PADI, NASC is National Scuba Educators, it’s just another group, there’s Patti, Nasty, Now We, SSI, it’s just one of the
0:08:30
(Speaker 2)
fingers of dive instruction. And have you seen any increase in the number of lifeguards you were able to attract since your big shout out last year about
0:08:41
(Speaker 1)
the call for the lifeguard shortage, did that make an impact? That’s a good question, and thanks for bringing that back up. We’ve been suffering with, you know, the lifeguard shortage many, many years. I think we’re trying to do better. I just see a lot of the recreational groups waive the fees that they used to charge to be… You just have to pay the train to
0:09:05
(Speaker 2)
be a lifeguard. Oh yeah, and these college kids, you know, they’re just trying to make a couple of bucks. They have to pay to make it. They can’t do it.
0:09:11
(Speaker 1)
Yeah, so I’ve seen that being waived. I’ve seen the wages are coming up. They were even doing incentives to get people to sign on and, what do they call that a bird dog fee, like if you could find a friend and bring them. I’ve saw a lot of different efforts, but I think the true root is until the day comes that we recognize lifeguards as the professionals that they are. They’re one of the few public safety groups
0:09:36
(Speaker 1)
that it’s right in the name. Yeah. Lifeguard, we’re guarding lives. Yeah. And you don’t want the part-time minded high school
0:09:44
(Speaker 3)
or college
0:09:45
(Speaker 1)
individuals doing that. You want career minded individuals like fire rescue, EMS and police officer mentality. We want also provide that individual who is super qualified. It’s almost, I use affectionately, we have a superpower. You know, lifeguards have this ability to stop an accident
0:10:06
(Speaker 1)
and people from getting into danger before they know or they get into danger. Police, fire, EMS can’t do that. They respond after. Yeah, you know, I have a good trained lifeguard. We can prevent people from getting into harm’s way. So
0:10:18
(Speaker 2)
I’m getting an idea because that’s what I do. Busy upstairs in my head, Wyatt. I’m getting an idea because down there, you know, you could have a full-time job as a lifeguard because the weather is, you know, allows for a year-long occupation, right? In the Northeast and other places where it’s only seasonal, maybe there is a program that either the fire or the EMS, the police could put in where some of them get shifted in the summer to be lifeguards and then can come back and take over their jobs because otherwise there’s no reason why
0:10:48
(Speaker 2)
anybody want a part-time job. You know, I mean, that’s the problem. You’re missing the opportunity to have the job last, right?
0:10:57
(Speaker 1)
You know, I spoke on that with a fellow interviewing me in New York. I can’t remember exactly what media that was, but absolutely. What I see in a perfect vision from the Wyatt Warnuth imagination is if you had a fire service or police service or public safety service that had career minded, you know, medics, EMTs, and they had a primary job of policing or firefighting because one of the things that we have around,
0:11:28
(Speaker 1)
I think all the networks of fire police here is they have lateral duties. We have police officers who learn how to dive and they can go be divers when they need it. You have fire departments who do hazmat and high rise, even though they have a primary job,
0:11:42
(Speaker 1)
they could be lifeguards. They could go open those pools and here’s the beautiful part about it. And this has gone away over the years, almost every trade of apprentice, you can bring in that high school and that college kid, and he can apprentice and make a force multiplier to that career mind. Yeah, individual that that’s their, their, their secondary responsibility under the fire police. Yeah. And they can help groom, and then
0:12:06
(Speaker 1)
that person would want to come and join the police or fire department and have that as a secondary job.
0:12:10
(Speaker 2)
See, I see it the same exact way. That’s really an awesome visual. And well, maybe somebody heard us talk about it, and we’ll start getting moving on that. I would like to see some of this implemented, because it is a major story we’re talking about today. You’re here for a reason. I got you off the beach, Wyatt Werneth, today. I got you
0:12:29
(Speaker 2)
off the beach. How’s the weather down there today, by the way? It’s fantastic.
0:12:33
(Speaker 1)
You know, all the buzz is the surfers are coming out, the waves are up. It’s beautiful. We’re not really that scared. We’ve seen a dozen or more of these over the years with a threat. This one’s going to be passing far enough out that it’s given us pretty decent weather and good surf. So the beaches are crowded. Believe it or not, it’s crowded.
0:12:55
(Speaker 2)
Okay, cool. Well, I thank you so much for joining me, Wyatt Werneth, the official spokesperson for the American Lifeguard Association, and now my friend who I can call on. You know, I always got a guy, Wyatt. I always got a guy or a girl. So I’m glad you’re my guy who can come talk about riptides and beach safety and just safety in general, water safety when you’re out there or near a pool or near a beach with your family.
0:13:19
(Speaker 2)
Thank you. Have a great day.
0:13:21
(Speaker 1)
All right. I’m your guy, but remember to swim in front of the lifeguard, America.
0:13:25
(Speaker 2)
Okay, bye Wyatt.
0:13:28
(Speaker 1)
Bye bye, be safe.
0:13:29
(Speaker 2)
Be safe, Wyatt Werneth. Checking in from Cocoa Beach, Florida. It really is, Bob, the last time a lifeguard that looks like Wyatt Werneth is gonna run off the beach from me, darn it. is gonna run off the beach from me, darn it.
