Name in the News: Jim Howe

Jim Howe had three career choices not long after returning to Hawaii with a bachelor’s degree in econometrics from the University of California at Santa Barbara and spending a couple years working for Hyatt Hotels: Manage the dining room at the Waialae Country Club, work for First Federal Savings & Loan as its "IRA/Keogh guy," or become a lifeguard.

He chose lifeguard, but it wasn’t just so he could be outdoors in the sun and the surf, which was typical for him as a kid growing up in Waikiki.

"I looked and I said, ‘We’re going to need a great ocean safety program in this state, if our visitor industry is going to remain viable.’ I made that career choice."

These days, Howe is operations chief of the Honolulu Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services Division, for which he supervises 250 lifeguards deployed at 33 towers and 18 mobile stations across Oahu. He is based in offices at the Diamond Head side of Kapiolani Park, and often speaks for the division when ocean conditions are threatening or ocean-related accidents take place.

Hired originally by Ralph Goto, "a great friend" who was and still is administrator of the division, Howe worked as a lifeguard originally at Waimea Bay, then at Sandy Beach, Makapuu and Hanauma Bay. Goto promoted him to captain in 1985, which coincided with the evolution of the division’s rescue craft:

"When I first got promoted, my boss said, ‘Here’s four (inflatable) boats. Create a rescue program for the island.’ That was my first task."

Within 18 months or so, the division was using safer, more effective personal watercraft.

Meanwhile, Howe and former lifeguard captain Brian Keaulana were been working on what has become the division’s hallmark risk-management system, after being trained in risk-management by the U.S. Army

"Brian dragged me to that," Howe said. "He saw the value of the concept, and it just changed everything we’d been doing up to that point. It all made sense, and it gave us a clear path forward."

Next was figuring out how to convey what was being learned to the people who need it most. To reach visitors to the islands, the division "wholesales" its information to the Hawaii Tourism Authority and other partners; to reach children and teen-agers, the division works with health teachers in the schools and also started a junior lifeguard program, which last summer graduated about 5,000 kids statewide, up from just seven when it began in 1981.

Howe has nothing but praise and respect for the people he works with. Lifeguarding is demanding both physically and emotionally. A failed rescue at Makapuu about 25 years ago still haunts him, though he did everything that he could.

"Those kind of memories drive you," he said "They drive you to work hard and do your very very best, every day."

Now 58, Howe is married to his high school sweetheart, the former Linda DaSilva, with whom he has a son, 23, and lives in Kaneohe.

QUESTION: Do you guys dread it when the warnings come up about large waves due to hit Oahu shores?

ANSWER: No, not at all.

Q: Why not?

A: Well, I think the key to it is understanding our workforce. Our lifeguard service here on Oahu differs from other lifeguard services around the country. Even around the world.

Q: How about around the state?

A: Well, we could say pretty much the state of Hawaii lifeguards. And it has to do with a really basic, fundamental difference, which is why we call ourselves ocean safety: We hire and recruit from the surfing world and the bodyboarding world, not from swimming pools and water polo teams. That’s the fundamental difference.

Also, we do no staffing up or down based on our season. There’s no seasonality to what we do. It’s constant. It’s just shifting priorities and shifting gears as our ocean changes.

Q: Is there any kind of credentialism that goes into becoming a lifeguard?

A: Absolutely. First of all is you have to have a strong foundation in emergency medicine. … All of our employees are emergency medical responders certified nationally. And about a third of them are emergency medical technicians, which is also a national-level certification. For a lot of folks, that’s where they drop out. They’re great surfers, they love the ocean, but they don’t have that ability to sit in the classroom and learn the medical side of it. The second part is they are open-water lifeguard certified, through the Untied States Life Saving Association. It’s called Class 1, so it’s the highest level.

Q: What kinds of things are going on in the ocean that keep you guys busy?

A: The primary work is to prevent injuries and deaths. And what we’ve done is we’ve adopted a method of being proactive versus reactive. … A fire department and an ambulance service wait for a call to come to them and then they go respond. A police department or a lifeguard service is out there in the community right where things are happening, and when they see things beginning to develop, they can intervene and stop it from ever turning into an emergency.

Q: What are the police powers of lifeguards? For example, just a few weeks ago you had that group of young men who just wouldn’t get out of the way at the Blow Hole even after being yelled at by lifeguards for a while.

A: We have no law enforcement authority. In fact, in Hawaii we have an open beaches policy. The counties actually are required to provide ocean access every quarter mile around the islands. It’s very different from almost any other place that I’m familiar with, in that we really have no mechanism to legally close a beach — with one exception, and that is if the captain of port for the Coast Guard says this is too dangerous and federalizes the water. Then you can use law enforcement to restrict access. That’s the only thing I know of.

Q: So that’s why some guy might be standing out there on the reef during the middle of tsunami wave warning …

A: Absolutely. Or why there’s 60 or 70 people who are out there at Waimea Bay when the surf is 50 or 60 feet.

I think the key to it is, here in Hawaii, unlike any place else, our community uses the ocean all the time as part of the lifestyle and part of what makes us the place it is. So we don’t use enforcement mechanisms to restrict access based on hazard levels.

Q: So how do you approach the issue of ocean safety?

A: We use basically a risk-management system. We look very carefully at who’s getting injured, who’s dying, where, and what they were doing. Then we design programs to try to address what we call the mechanism of injury.

So, for visitors, for instance, drowning is the leading cause of death. What they’re doing is snorkeling. It’s not the big waves, it’s not the shorebreaks. It’s actually snorkeling that’s the leading activity that’s causing visitor deaths.

Now, it’s very different with residents.

Q: What would that be?

A: It’s free diving for residents — shallow-water blackout. In the last year there’s been about five or six of those, if you go back and look.

Q: Not surfing or bodysurfing?

A: Not surfing or bodysurfing. So this is why we have to study it … so we can tailor our programs to what the real issues are.

Q: What about opihi pickers?

A: Well, there’s not many opihi left. That used to be the case.

Q: More on the other islands, probably, huh?

A: These things change over time. In some cases, it’s a new kind of ocean recreation activity, a new sport gets developed. …

Q: In the statistics regarding injuries and deaths, is it mostly tourists?

A: About 50-50, residents and tourists.

Q: What are the totals?

A: OK, this is for last year: The big number is what we call "prevents."

Public contacts — preventive actions — totaled 1.9 million. That’s the bulk of the work we do. This is consistent, constant talking to folks, offering them alternatives. All day, every day, everywhere, passing on some helpful advice, maybe issuing a stern warning. Maybe putting up yellow tape, putting up signs, talking to people …

Q: Does this involve, at the end of the day, the lifeguard going back to the station and writing up a report, kind of like a cop would?

A: They keep a count of how many people they contacted every day, and then we tabulate that. So almost 2 million prevents. And what we know is that if we can get people to the appropriate location for their activity and skill level, they’re just going to have a great time and go home and say how great Hawaii is. Where people run into trouble is when they end up at a place they just don’t know and there’s nobody there to help them, and they jump in and it’s all over.

So, last year, 2,619 rescues — even with the almost 2 million preventives, we still had to go rescue that many people.

(Also), we had 110,000 treat-and-release cases at the beach for medical situations. And we had 1,336 major medicals — where people had to be transported to a hospital.

If you look at the gross numbers, we service about 25 million people on this island at the beach every year, or about 110,000 people a day. And there’s very few deaths.

Q: How many deaths last year were there?

A: Five. But that’s five too many. Each one’s a tragedy.

Q: So the spike in visitor drownings on Kauai and other neighbor islands that got everybody worried lately, that’s not even about Oahu, right?

A: Well, the neighbor islands just don’t have as many lifeguards.

Q: So how do you reach the tourists, to warn them of the dangers? Couldn’t the hotels or whoever finance a video that could be shown on the airlines for people coming here, but in such a way as to not scare the heck out of them?

A: Sure. We know drowning deaths rarely occur in Hawaii when there are lifeguards on duty. But we don’t have lifeguards at every beach. So what can we do when you don’t have lifeguards at every beach? We have some choices.

The first would be, like I said, this whole thing about enforcement. We could basically close beaches and the beach parks and say, nope, nobody can go because it’s too hazardous. … (But) that’s not really something the state of Hawaii does.

Then we have what we call an outreach-type policy, which would be to increase lifeguard services. That would reduce deaths.

Then, finally, we have an education option, which would be to provide reliable, consistent and accurate ocean-hazard information when and where it would be the most effective. We think the place it would be most effective is when people are at the beach, not in an airplane. (Laughs) That’s when people need it, when they’re at the beach.

So this is where, strategically, we work with many partners to try to accomplish this goal. Working with the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the four counties, the University of Hawaii and the state Department of Health, we developed a website about 10 years ago called hawaiibeachsafety.org. And that website we’ve seen consistently over the years about 10-12,000 people a month using it. So do the math: Over 10 years, that’s a million-plus people.

Q: How do they find out about it?

A: Well, part of what we realized early on is that we’re really a wholesaler of information to visitors, not a retailer. So what we’re doing is we market that to the people who are directly in touch with visitors — the hotel concierge’s, the waiters, the maids, the tour and travel booking agents, the rental car companies, the security folks. That system has worked really, really, really well over the last 10 years.

Q: Is there a way to get the neighbor islands into this wholesaling of ocean safety information?

A: Well, what we’re looking at doing now is going to the next step, which is retailing the information, again with the visitor industry and the counties, through the use of smart-phone technology. Ten years ago people didn’t have smart phones that people could take to the beach with them. There wasn’t social media. So what we’re looking at doing is creating an infrastructure that will allow folks to take that video off the airplane — instead of just seeing it in the airplane, they could download it onto their smart phone — and watch it whenever and wherever they wanted to. What we know is that about 70 percent of people in the U.S. now have smart phones, and, if you notice, most people take their smart phones to the beach.

Q: What is your view about placing the lifeguard headquarters down in Waikiki? Are you involved in any of that decision-making?

A: I am certainly aware of it. Let me put it this way. Last year in Waikiki, we serviced 8.25 million people. We did about 240,0000 preventive actions, 369 rescues and 522 major medical cases. That’s a big task.

Q: So you’re saying it should be somewhere down there.

A: Well, if we’re going to be able to continue to do this job — and frankly we’re seeing visitor arrivals increase, thank goodness — but we’re responsible for taking care of all those folks and they do go to the beach. So we’ve got to be able to support our lifeguards with what they need to be able to do their job effectively.

Q: What about the Kakaako alternative?

A: Well, that is certainly something. What we also anticipate — and I’ve worked very carefully on the Kakaako concept — is that with 22 condos going in down there, and 60,000 people moving in down there in the next 20 years, that area is going to need ocean safety services. It’s going to need the same level of support that Waikiki does. When you invite folks to come down to the beach and use the ocean, things happen, and if you’re gonna have a good ocean safety program, you gotta be able to support those folks out there who are being tasked with that job.

Q: So there is a need for this service in Waikiki as well as in Kakaako?

A: I think so.