With the warm weather over the Memorial Day weekend, you might have been tempted to cool off in one of the region’s many beautiful rivers. If you headed to Glen Otto Park or High Rocks Park in the Portland area, you might have seen Emergency Medical Technicians from the American Medical Response (AMR) River Rescue Program on hand to help out in case of an emergency in the water. The EMTs are getting training in river currents and rescue operations this week and will staff the two parks all summer long. Gracie Goodrich, an AMR River Rescue Program supervisor, tells us more about the program, which has helped more than 2,000 people since it started in 1999.
The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. It’s supposed to hit the 90s in the Portland area this weekend. You might be tempted to cool off in one of the region’s many beautiful rivers. If you go to Glen Otto Park in Troutdale or High Rocks Park in Gladstone, you’ll probably see Emergency Medical Technicians from the American Medical Response (AMR) River Rescue Program. Sadly, emergencies are not unusual. AMR’s program has helped more than 2,000 people since it started about 25 years ago.
Gracie Goodrich is the program supervisor. She joins us to talk about how to be safe while cooling off and having fun. It’s great to have you in the studio.
Gracie Goodrich: Thanks, Dave.
Miller: There are a lot of different swimming holes and a lot of potentially dangerous river stretches in our listening area, not just in the Portland area. How have you all decided the limited places where you’ll deploy lifeguard teams?
Goodrich: Our program started in 1999 at Glen Otto Park in Troutdale. I think they were averaging about a drowning per year, up until the deployment of our program. It’s kind of a dangerous area of the river. The current moves really fast, there’s some drop offs. The community was really worried about all the drownings and they were looking for a solution. AMR stepped in. They had their Reach and Treat Program, which goes up on the mountains and gets swift water training. So they deployed those techs out there as lifeguards for that summer and then the program evolved into what we have today.
High Rocks Park, same thing. The first couple of years it was a drowning a year, and then in the summer of 2002, there were three drownings before, I think the second week in July. So the city was again looking for a solution and we talked about expanding the program down there, so they started there summer of 2002. Again, it’s just a hazardous area. There’s a lot of people who go out cliff jumping. There’s some really high rocks, really fun sections of river ...
Miller: Up to 30 feet high.
Goodrich: Yeah, I think the highest point’s maybe, 20-25 feet and then the water gets to about 30 feet deep there as well. It’s really deep. So those are just two of the most hazardous spots, that’s where we saw a lot of drownings in Oregon prior to the start of our program.
Miller: What are the most common safety issues that you see?
Goodrich: A big thing I see is people really underestimate currents. Swimming in a river is so much different than swimming in a pool, swimming in a lake, because you just have that added hazard. If you’re out swimming, even if you’re a strong swimmer, if you’re now fighting against the current, you’re tiring yourself out and you’re making it harder for you to swim. So that’s a feature we see in rivers that people just don’t always expect …
Miller: And a hidden danger, even if you think you know, all of a sudden, the force of even a medium-force river, it’s so much bigger than a human can handle.
Goodrich: Oh, for sure. Even us out there, until the water really slows down, we’re not making progress upstream against the current. We have different techniques that we use when we’re out there, but just for the average person who’s out, those currents can really catch them off guard.
Miller: I mentioned the heat because it might be 95 degrees on Sunday. The water, though, is way colder. What role does water temperature play in terms of water safety?
Goodrich: The water’s pretty cold. I think today it’s getting up to maybe 60 at High Rocks on the Clackamas, which is really cold. I think, again, swimming pools are usually around 80 degrees. So that just exhausts you. If you’re in that cold water, your muscles are working harder, you get tired a lot faster and it just makes it harder to swim out there.
Miller: What are lifeguards looking for? If you’re out there patrolling a river, what signs of distress are you paying attention to?
Goodrich: The big thing we look for is people who look like they’re maybe a little out of their element. If they’re swimming in a section of river that they don’t seem prepared for, obviously you have all the classic signs of people waving their arms or yelling that they need help, but sometimes people don’t exhibit any of those symptoms. So we’re really keeping a close eye on everybody. We know a lot of the particular hazardous spots, and anyone who looks like they’re in trouble, people who aren’t making forward progress, those are the things that we really look out for.
Miller: What kind of extra training do river lifeguards get?
Goodrich: Our program is really unique. It’s the only one in the country that’s like it. All of our lifeguards out there are EMT-certified. We work through AMR, the ambulance company And then we do a special academy, we have an 80-hour academy. We’re certified through the United States Lifesaving Association, USLA, to their highest standard. We do training on reading the rivers, reading the different currents, how to navigate all those currents.
We work with a bunch of surface crafts. We have paddle boards, we have kayaks that we can use to get to people quickly. We also free-dive in our life jackets, which we’re always wearing, at least 10 feet. But usually up to the 30 feet that I was saying was the deepest part at High Rocks Park …
Miller: With a life jacket on?
Goodrich: With a life jacket on.
Miller: How do you do that? I mean, like the entire purpose of that flotation device is to pop you up. It seems like you have to work really hard to dive down if you’re wearing air.
Goodrich: Yes, they’re foam life jackets. I think it’s about 17 pounds of flotation, so you are fighting against it, especially those first 10 feet. Then it gets a little bit easier after that, as the pressure kind of compresses that. But, like I said, it’s something that we train for. Our techs put in a lot of time and they work really hard to learn how to work against that and how to dive effectively.
Miller: I’m assuming nobody is forcing you or the other lifeguards to do this work. You’re volunteering for this. Why? What do you like about this?
Goodrich: This is a job that I feel really passionate about, and most people on the team do if you ask them. Most of us have some kind of story, we’re a lot of Northwest kids, a lot of kids who like the outdoors, have been in trouble at some point or know somebody and have been in those situations. Personally, I love the community aspect of it. We’re really out there, we’re present with the community. We get to see the impact of what we do. We spend a lot of time interacting with people, getting to warn them about the hazards of the river, loaning out life jackets. I think that’s one of the coolest parts of the job.
Miller: How many rescues do your teams do in an average year?
Goodrich: We usually help out about 100 people a year and we’ve had over 2,000 since the program started in 1999. So we see a handful of people get in trouble out there.
Miller: The vast majority of rivers and swimming holes in the Northwest do not have lifeguards. We’re talking about this rare two in the Portland metro area that do, through this program. What general recommendations do you have for water safety or boating safety?
Goodrich: I think the biggest thing that I can recommend is wear a life jacket. We see a lot of people out there who, again, think that they’re going to be OK and then they end up getting a sticky spot that could have been avoided if they were just wearing a life jacket. We have a loner life jacket program at our parks. A big initiative that a lot of local fire departments have started around the area is putting life jacket loner stands in a lot of really popular swimming spots. You’ll see along the Sandy River and a lot of different places. So, if you don’t have one, there are ways to get access to those for free.
Always swim with a buddy, be prepared and call 911 in case of an emergency.
Miller: Gracie, thanks very much.
Goodrich: Thank you.
Miller: Gracie Goodrich is a program supervisor for AMR’s River Rescue Program.
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