By Ed Offley
The emergency came out of nowhere.
Anna Adams and her partner, Caleb, were riding “rover” patrol on Front Beach Road when the two city lifeguards found themselves in a life-or-death situation at the Bay County Pier.
“Right as we got there, we saw someone running up from the beach into the parking lot, waving his arms and pointing out in the water,” said Adams, 22. Brandon Friday, a newly arrived city resident, had been swimming with friends when he was caught by a rip current just west of the pier.
It was Saturday, February 25, and the formal tourist season kickoff was still four days away. But with single red flags warning beachgoers of elevated risk for rip currents, Beach Rescue Director Daryl Paul had deployed his team for the weekend.
An avid surfer and swimmer, Adams was beginning her fourth year as a lifeguard at Panama City Beach. “We had been training all winter,” she told PCB Life. “We knew that as soon as the season started, we’d have to be ready. You prepare yourself – but then it happens.”
Grabbing swim fins and her “can” – a rigid plastic flotation device known as a Burnside buoy – Adams raced into the surf. The same rip current that had overwhelmed the victim now swiftly carried her out several hundred yards, where she quickly spotted a shadow floating just under the surface.
It was Brandon Friday’s inert body. Adams dove under the form and came up holding him in a rescue position, then started swimming for shore. Even before reaching the shore, Caleb swam up and found no sign of a pulse. He began a Heimlich maneuver to expel water from the young man’s lungs, then started CPR.
Once on the beach, the lifeguards continued working on the victim, and to great relief detected a pulse on the still-unconscious man. An EMT crew arrived and transported Friday to the hospital. After several days in the intensive care unit, he subsequently recovered sufficiently to be released from the hospital, although a full recovery will take months.
“That gentleman is alive today because of that aggressive rescue culture that our lifeguards have,” Paul said.
As Spring Break neared its culmination in late March, opening the way for the rest of the spring tourist season, Paul said his lifeguards are well prepared for their vital mission.
The city currently has three manned lifeguard towers – one on either side of the city pier and a third along the beachfront at Boardwalk Beach Hotel & Resort, which has contracted with the city under a public-private partnership to provide lifeguard service.
Now fully operational, the city deploys nine lifeguards on the Gulf beachfront each day from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m. each day. In addition, Paul and a deputy are available in case of an emergency. The lifeguards actually muster at 8:30 a.m. each day for two hours of exercise and training.
“We’re doing a lot better than in past years,” Paul said. Appointed to the director’s post in February after five years as a city firefighter and paramedic, Paul has a staff of eight full-time and four part-time employees in addition to the seasonal lifeguard staff. As of mid-March, the division had five seasonal lifeguards attending ocean rescue training and anticipated additional recruits in the months ahead.
“We have a nice returning staff,” Paul said. “I’d really be happy with fifteen seasonals.”
Anyone interested in becoming a beach lifeguard can apply through the city’s web site at pcbgov.com. Applicants must be able to run one mile within 12 minutes and swim 500 meters within 10 minutes. Qualified beach lifeguards earn $17 per hour.
In 2022, there were five drownings along the Gulf beachfront – all at places not patrolled by the city lifeguards, Paul said. At the guarded beaches? “Zero,” he said. In the first three weeks of March 2023, lifeguards made fifteen rescues and about 200 “preventative actions” where they stepped in before an emergency occurred.
For Anna Adams, the rescue of Brandon Friday was an adrenalin-pounding experience, but did not mark the start of her 2023 lifeguard service. “I had made two other rescues that day before that event,” she said.
