Coeur d'Alene ends lifeguards at City Beach

COEUR d’ALENE — Since she moved to America from Ukraine 17 years ago, Julie Caires has spent her summers swimming at Coeur d'Alene City Beach.

As she closely watched her two boys, ages 3 and 5, playing in the water Wednesday, Caires told The Press she was surprised to see the lack of lifeguards on duty this year.

"I've always hung out right here and I remember there was a lot of them sitting here, but I haven't seen any for a while," she said.

That is because, the city of Coeur d'Alene says, it is having trouble finding enough lifeguards, as well as finding those who are acceptable applicants. So this year the city took down the lifeguard stands and put up signs instead, warning people to swim at their own risk.

Although Caires watches her kids very closely, the Spokane woman said it was nice to have the extra eye of lifeguards who were trained in first aid.

"I definitely think someone should always be out here," Caires said. "Just having someone here, knowing that if something goes wrong ... if someone needs CPR or something, it's just nice to have someone out here."

Deputy City Administrator Sam Taylor said it has been a struggle for a few years to find and retain lifeguards.

Taylor said the city offered incentives such as working in the parks if the beach closed due to bad weather, which guaranteed them a wage for the day. They also offered to pay for Red Cross certification, which costs up to $250, as well as paying for training time for the lifeguards to complete their swim hours. He said the city started lifeguards at $9 and head lifeguards made more than $12. As far as he could tell, Taylor said, Coeur d'Alene paid one of the highest wages in the state for lifeguards. Sandpoint is the only city he knows of that pays more, starting at $9.25 for new lifeguards.

Nancy Lowery, former aquatics director for the Salvation Army Kroc Center, has been lifeguarding for 25 years and managed City Beach for "many, many, many years." Lowery got her lifeguarding certificate after a little boy drowned at City Beach 26 years agoa she was there with her kids. She said it is extremely dangerous not to have a lifeguard on duty because during her time managing the beach, an average of six active saves took place each summer.

The state of Idaho has the second-highest unintentional drowning rate for children ages 1 to 5, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Lowery said she and other lifeguards in the past watched over local children who would regularly come to swim unsupervised by parents, and as lifeguards "cared a lot about the community." She knows how hard it can be to recruit lifeguards, as she has made it her life's work to keep people safe, but said she feels the city could do more to budget and incentivize lifeguards.

"The reasons that they've given, I think, are easily overcome if you're dedicated to that measure — to that public safety," Lowery said.

Mike Earin, also a former lifeguard of City Beach dating back to the late ’60s, expressed his concern over the lack of lifeguards by simply stating, "It takes a village." He said he has offered to help out in any way he can and hopes to see the lifeguards return to the beach in the future.

"Hopefully they can find maybe someone doing the internship in aquatics from one of the universities or something in the future," Earin said. "I know there are ways to do it — or hopefully there would be."

Taylor said many of the young lifeguards find working at places like Triple Play or Silverwood Theme Park more "palatable" because he has heard they get incentives like season passes, and their friends are there. He said it is also "much easier" to be a lifeguard at a theme park than it is to be an open-water lifeguard.

"So that's really been our struggle, and we just didn't want to take the risk of not having enough folks and not meeting the community's expectation for the number of lifeguards," he said.

With hundreds of people on the beach on any given day in the summer, though far less on cool days like Wednesday, safety is a priority that now lies with the community. With appropriate signage, Taylor said, the city believes it is "addressing the liability issues concerning the beach," and believes people in the area are used to swimming areas that do not have a lifeguard on duty. City Beach had the only open-water lifeguards on duty in the city.

"We are asking the community to be more vigilant and pay more attention to their children or anyone else who may have difficulty swimming," Taylor said. "We are going to keep reviewing the situation each year to see what our opportunities are, but it has been a challenge."