I lived within weekend driving distance of the ocean even before Molly and I began wandering from one coastal town to another. Salt water is my medication. Winter or summer it has been a cure for periodic restlessness and discontent. But there have been times when both the ocean’s fury and its illusory calm have scared the bejeebers out of me.
During my four years in the Navy, I sailed inside storms, through some of the world’s most treacherous waters, including Cape Hatteras and the Horn of Africa, and atop seas with depths measured in miles and filled with ice bergs. But on this coastal journey with Molly, I realized that the most dangerous part of the ocean was within a few feet of shore. I wouldn’t be surprised if angry surfs and rip tides have taken more lives than all the deep waters in the world.
It doesn’t take long hanging around beaches for the latter point to become painfully clear. I remember the tragedy that took the life of a marine sergeant, a dad, who drowned while saving the life of his young son, while the rest of his family watched. One moment it was a family outing filled with wonder and fun. The next, literally, a wife was without a husband, and kids were without a father.
I was thinking about all this when I met Danny Shell, a retired Maryland state trooper and swat team veteran, who, in his retirement, was a member of the Emerald Isle Fire Department's ocean rescue team. Visitors have seen him patrolling Emerald Isle’s beaches, on the west end of Bogue Banks, one of North Carolina’s barrier islands. Officer Shell had experienced, on two successive Sundays in the middle of the past summer, the full range of challenges and emotions of an ocean rescuer – the first tore his heart out, the next put it back in. The pattern would be his life on the beach.
The first Sunday was busy. He began by assisting a woman with a shattered ankle, shattered by an errant surf board, lost by a young surfer too close to shore.
Shortly afterwards he got another call, an urgent plea for help. A man was in trouble, deep trouble. Officer Shell drove his emergency vehicle as fast as possible across the sand, dodging obstacles such as volley ball nets and deep holes in the sand, his flashing lights warning sun bathers and volleyball players to make way. When he arrived he found a 43-year-old man lying lifeless on the beach, surrounded by his family screaming for help. The scene, he said, was “unnerving, chaotic and eventually hopeless.”
He assisted the EMS personnel in administering CPR and other lifesaving measures “for what seemed like hours” in a desperate and losing attempt to save the young man’s life. EMS people continued the effort as they transported the drowning victim to the hospital.
“I spoke to family members trying desperately to reassure them that their loved one was in the best possible hands. I felt helpless to do much more than hold them while they cried,” he said.
It was the rescue team’s first drowning of the season.
It wasn’t a good day. “Not good at all,” he told his wife when he got home.
The following Sunday started better. And Officer Shell was about to complete his last trip of the day to the far west end of Emerald Isle. The surf was “what I call mean and ugly … big crashing waves, strong currents, and lots of movement in the surf.”
He noticed three swimmers about 150 yards offshore. Though he felt “a bit uncomfortable” that they were that far out, they appeared fine. He was thankful he wouldn’t have to go into the rough seas after them.
Suddenly, through the roar of the waves, he heard the frantic cries of “help, help.”
“I entered the surf and began swimming with all I had while praying I could make it through the strong surf…. The waves were so strong and high I could not visually locate the swimmers.”
As he swam to the top of one wave and caught a glimpse of them, the next wave knocked him down and back. Realizing his “efforts were failing,” he headed back toward the shore where firefighters had launched a Jet Ski and rescue sled. Officer Shell grabbed hold of the rescue sled, rode it across the waves, and finally reached the distressed swimmers.
Two of the swimmers in trouble were pulled onto the rescue sled while Officer Shell, carrying a rescue buoy, swam toward the drowning man. The man was near panic. “Am I going to make it,” he asked.
With the man in tow, Officer Shell swam toward the beach, until the Jet Ski and rescue sled could return for them.
The ocean rescuers had saved three lives, in the worst conditions.
Unlike the week before, when Officer Shell returned home and his wife asked him how his day had gone, he could honestly say, “It went great!”
