Beaches
Concern for rip currents goes beyond Pawleys Island
On their way to work, Midway Fire Rescue crews are encouraged to think like a tourist.
“You’re going to look at your currents, your tides. You’re going to come over and look at the beach,” said Master Firefighter Paramedic Clint Corpening. “I encourage all my guys: go to the beach in the morning.”
Midway crews completed a month of training in water rescue with boat drills this week off the inlet between Pawleys Island and Litchfield Beach that gives the department its name. It’s an area where two drownings within a month last summer prompted the town of Pawleys Island to post warnings about rip currents and place rescue buoys on the beach.
Rip currents form when water builds up behind sand bars along the beach then flows back to the ocean at low spots or around structures such as groins.
“This area here, on this end, is always a rip current area,” Corpening, a lead water instructor for Midway, said as he headed to the north end of Pawleys Island one morning this week. He spotted two north of the Third Street access.
“The dynamic on the north end of Pawleys Island is changing by the day,” said Paul Groce, a Town Council member who is also part of an ad hoc committee Georgetown County created for beach management issues. “It’s potentially more hazardous than I’ve seen it.”
A rock and timber jetty that used to mark the northern limit of the island and the southern limit of Midway Inlet is now mostly buried in sand. Shoals stretch toward Litchfield Beach.
“We have a new beach created right by the inlet,” Groce said. But unlike the front beach, “it drops right off.”
Last month, the town debuted a two-and-a-half minute video that blends a tourist-friendly welcome with a warning about the dangers of rip currents. Groce told the committee last week that he worries that the message won’t get to county residents, who make up the majority of beachgoers at certain times.
“We can make the tourists aware, but people who come on the golf carts, we have an issue there,” he said. “It’s kind of scary.”
Alan Dubroff, chief operating officer at Litchfield by the Sea, said they have similar concerns and have also put up signs at the beach accesses.
“Any assistance from the county would be great,” he told the committee.
John Martin, who chairs the committee, is also president of the Litchfield Beaches Property Owners Association. He said the POA board talked about life rings for the county beach accesses that it helps manage. It would be hard for the volunteer association to do alone, but something that Midway Fire Rescue could partner with, Martin said.
The beach committee was formed last year as the county prepared to update the beach management plan it is required by the state to maintain. The update, the first since 1992, was done by a consultant, and the committee members are wondering what their role will be going forward.
Pam Martin, a professor at Coastal Carolina University, suggested that the plan itself and its 10 elements provides a framework for the committee. The last element is preserving and enhancing public access for “full enjoyment of the beach.”
That includes “not dying when you’re swimming out there,” she said.
A friend of her son’s drowned at Litchfield Beach two years ago. “There were a bunch of kids on the beach that day,” Martin said. “They’re not as aware of the changing dangers.”
Working with groups at Waccamaw High, like the National Honor Society, could get rip current information to students before the summer vacation starts.
Groce said the town of Pawleys Island would like to share ideas with other beach communities in the county.
As he watched Midway crews train with the rescue boats, Corpening said new equipment and protocols will be in place this summer. The department will map the currents at the north end of Pawleys with a drone, but he said they change with conditions and monitoring, like rescue training, is ongoing.
“It’s dangerous, but as long as we watch out after each other and just follow safety,” Corpening said. “You know, if you see something, say something. Call 911.”
