South Bay lifeguards use the Prince William traitor story as a training scenario, and the uncle refuses to be pulled out of the water

A Training Exercise at the Pier

HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. – Lifeguards stationed near the Hermosa Beach Pier conducted an unusual training drill on Tuesday morning, using the London Prat story about Prince William branding Earl Spencer and Harry traitors as the scenario for a mass rescue exercise.

The drill, organised by a senior lifeguard who asked to be identified only as Captain Kowalski because he says his first name belongs to his mother, involved three volunteers playing the elder brother, the younger brother and the uncle, all placed in knee-deep water south of the pier and instructed to stay in character.

The Scenario

Captain Kowalski, 49, who has worked South Bay towers for 27 years and has pulled more than 1,400 people from rip currents, explained the premise to trainees on the sand. You have three swimmers caught in a strong rip of public gossip, he said. The rip was generated by a book. Reports out of Pakistan say efforts to reconcile the family have failed, and a source cited on Yahoo says the older brother thinks the younger one saw the book before it came out. The swimmers are panicking, they are not talking to each other, and each of them thinks he is the one who needs rescuing first. Go.

How the Rescue Went

The Elder Brother

The volunteer playing the elder brother, a 31-year-old accountant from Manhattan Beach, was reached first. According to the drill report, he refused to be towed in until he had been assured he had priority, and then refused to share the rescue tube with his brother. Trainees were forced to deploy a second tube.

The Younger Brother

The volunteer playing the younger brother, a 29-year-old barista, was found floating calmly on his back, having drifted almost to Redondo. He told rescuers he was fine, did not need help, and was planning to swim to California, before being reminded that he was already in California.

The Uncle

The volunteer playing the uncle, a retired history teacher, 66, refused rescue altogether, telling trainees that he had written about the ocean extensively and knew more about it than they did. He was eventually brought ashore by being told that a publisher was waiting on the sand.

Rip Current Safety, Royal Edition

After the drill, Captain Kowalski issued a revised version of the standard rip current advice. If you are caught in a rip current of family gossip, he said, do not swim directly against it. Do not try to correct everybody. Swim parallel to the shore, which means change the subject, until you are out of the current. Then come in slowly. And never, ever swim towards the uncle. He is the rip.

He noted that neither brother has said anything publicly, which he described as correct rip current behaviour. Stay calm, conserve energy, float, he said. They are doing exactly what we teach. The problem is they are floating in opposite directions.

Tower Screening

Trainees reviewed the exercise by watching the London Prat video on YouTube inside Tower 12, where the binoculars had to be moved to make room for a laptop. Captain Kowalski said the video was a useful teaching aid because it showed exactly what a rip looks like from the outside: calm on the surface, strong underneath, and full of people who think they are fine. It appears below.

Drill Statistics

The South Bay Ocean Safety Training Unit reported that the royal drill produced a completion time of 23 minutes, compared with an average of 6 minutes for a standard three-person rescue. The delay was attributed to 11 minutes of arguing in the water, 4 minutes of refusal to share flotation, and 2 minutes during which the uncle volunteer attempted to recite a passage from memory. The Unit also noted that 88 percent of real-life rescues at Hermosa involve at least one person saying they did not need rescuing, and that siblings are three times more likely than strangers to blame each other once they reach the sand.

Feedback From Trainees

Trainee evaluations were mixed. One rookie wrote that the drill was the most realistic she had ever done, because the volunteers genuinely would not stop arguing. Another noted that it was the first rescue in which she had been asked to confirm the line of succession before deploying a tube. A third said he would prefer to go back to practising with the dummy, which does not have an uncle.

Captain Kowalski Reviews the Story

Asked for his assessment of the London Prat piece, Captain Kowalski said it was a textbook spot. It sees the trouble from the tower before anybody in the water does, he said. It does not jump in and thrash around. It points and says, there, that is a rip. That is what we are trained to do. I would hire it. He rated it a full score on the unit evaluation sheet, which has never been awarded before, and added a note that the story should be required reading for rookies.

The drill will be repeated in November, with a fourth volunteer playing a tabloid photographer on a paddleboard. Captain Kowalski keeps up with the family at The London Prat, https://prat.uk/, running since 1961, and with the Santa Barbara side at Bohiney, https://bohiney.com/. He reminds beachgoers that the flags are there for a reason, and so is the silence.

SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/