COASTAL OBSERVER

Signs are due to go up on the north end of Pawleys Island today to warn beachgoers of the threat of rip currents in an area where five people have drowned in the last two years; two of those in the last month.

Torpedo-shaped rescue buoys will be fitted to the signs that will be placed from the Shell Road beach access to Midway Inlet. “They’ll be more visible,” Police Chief Mike Fanning said.

An orange rescue ring is mounted on a post at the crest of the dune by the access. It overlooks the beach where a Georgia man went into the water July 13 to help rescue a group of swimmers who were being carried offshore by a rip current.

Chase Childers, 38, drowned after apparently going in search of other victims, according to police. He left a wife and three young children.

From interviews on the scene and afterward, Fanning learned that there were 11 people caught in rip currents that Sunday afternoon.

A caller to 911 reported six or seven people out in the ocean at 4:42 p.m. She told a dispatcher that her husband and two others went into the water with boogie boards to help them to shore.

“They were really struggling,” the caller said.

Fanning spoke with one of them, who was part of a group of five adults and four children who were staying on the island and had gone into the water around Third Street. They drifted north toward Midway Inlet with the longshore current that runs parallel to the beach.

“The kids started getting pulled out with their boogie boards in the rip current,” Fanning said. “They struggled with the rip current for almost 20 minutes.”

It was that group that first attracted the attention of other beachgoers around Shell Road. Fanning learned from witnesses that there was another couple caught by the rip current that runs away from the shore  when water builds up behind submerged sandbars.

A man who went into the water with Childers told Fanning that Childers kept swimming past the group. “He must have seen or heard something,” Fanning said.

Childers had served with the Cobb County, Ga., Police Department from 2011 to 2014. He earned the department’s life saving award in 2012, it said in a statement last week. “His actions this past weekend were not out of character, they were the embodiment of the same bravery and commitment he showed every day as an officer.”

Childers was also an athlete who played two seasons in the minor leagues with the Baltimore Orioles. 

The second rescuer followed Childers, but when he caught up Childers was “bobbing” in the water. The other man couldn’t tow him to shore and lost his grip on Childers.

Detective Jono Fairfield went in the water to search for Childers. His body was found about an hour later by Midway Fire Rescue swimmers near the inlet.

Fanning said it was disturbing that none of the bystanders used the rescue ring during the incident.

In talking with one of the adults in the initial group of victims, “his exact words were, ‘if we didn’t have those boogie boards, we would have drowned,’” Fanning said.

Since a pair of drownings in the area around Shell Road two weeks apart in October and November the Town Council has debated ways to let visitors know about rip currents. Those included a flag warning system for hazardous surf and a video explaining rip currents that could be accessed through a QR code on access signs.

A 20-year-old visitor from Atlanta drowned on June 25. Childers died the day before the council’s monthly meeting. The council  agreed to put up warning signs and add rescue devices.

Administrator Dan Newquist said two 4-by-8-foot double-sided signs are due to be installed Friday. A key message is the need to call 911, he said.

Fanning said he is working on the rescue buoys. Unlike the rescue ring, the buoys won’t have a case. Combined with their shape, he thinks that will make people more likely to use them.

Neither of the recent drownings occurred when there was a hazardous surf advisory, Fanning noted. That’s why the warning signs are important.

“Rip currents are sneaky. We don’t know when they are going to occur and how strong they are going to be,” he said. “We’re trying to educate people.”