On Thursday the first mega-swell of the winter closed out Pipeline on Oahu’s North Shore, where the Pipe Masters competition was called off — but at Maui’s Peahi the World Surf League’s Jaws Big Wave Challenge ran in towering waves.
Skilled rescuers on personal watercraft charged in to locate fallen surfers and whisk them to safety before the next watery avalanche crashed down.
There couldn’t have been a better-timed reminder of the need for lifesaving training like that provided by Big Wave Risk Assessment Group, whose annual O‘ahu Global Safety Summit course is being held today through Sunday at Turtle Bay.
After the death of their friend and North Shore neighbor Sion Milosky, while surfing Mavericks in California, Kohl Christensen and Danilo Couto launched the course in 2011.
“We initially started to be able to look after each other better,” Christensen said. “Now I recommend it for anyone who spends time in the ocean.”
Although surfers are frequent first responders when swimmers or other surfers get in trouble, he said, “we found a lot of people lacked basic skills such as implementing proper CPR and first-aid techniques like how to do a simple tourniquet, and awareness of when it’s best to do them.”
To teach these skills and more, they approached Makaha waterman and former city-county lifeguard Brian Keaulana, “the person we believed to have the most water safety knowledge, who invented Jet Ski rescue and has trained agencies all around the world,” and Pamela Foster, a registered nurse with 20 years’ emergency room experience who serves as CPR instructor.
Both will teach BWRAG classes this weekend, along with big-wave surfer and paramedic Andrea Moller, and other surfers who will “do some breath work” for surviving hold-downs, Christensen said.
Students are asked to anticipate all sorts of scenarios, not just in big waves.
“When they’re doing the big waves, they’re prepared with Jet Skis and boats and safety teams,” Foster said, “but most drownings happen in the small, everyday stuff, when we’re not taking those precautions.”
Participants learn to identify an emergency, summon help and teach others to help them out on the scene.
“If you do nothing, brain cells start to die within about four minutes,” said Foster. “With continuous chest compression you can buy time until help comes.”
Pro surfer Caio Ibelli said BWRAG had made him “much more responsive and aware of hazardous situations” and able to react quickly, as he did last spring, using surfboard pickup skills he’d been taught.
While surfing at Australia’s Snapper Rocks, “I was doing an air 360, spinning, and as I was landing, out of the side of my eye, I saw a little boy fall into deep water where the sand bank dropped off and the current whips very fast,” the Brazilian said.
“I jumped on top of him and scooped him up on my board. He couldn’t swim,” added Ibelli, who will be honored today with fellow BWRAG alumni who this year saved lives at Pipeline and Leftovers on the North Shore.
BWRAG OAHU GLOBAL SAFETY SUMMIT
>> When: Today-Sunday
>> Where: Instruction takes place in classrooms and the ocean at Turtle Bay Resort.
>> What: Basic two-day course, which includes CPR certification by Foster’s AED Institute, costs $450. Day 3 thrill craft certification costs $250.
>> Information: bwrag.com/2019-oahu-summit
