Once a Victim, Now a Lifeguard at Same Beach
Fourteen years ago on Atlantic Avenue Beach in Amagansett, a near-crisis unfolded when a lifeguard training on a Jet Ski lost control and hit a toddler playing at the water’s edge. Now a teenager, the victim has become a rescuer himself, working as a lifeguard at the very same beach.
Eliot Fisher, now 16, has always loved the water. He remembers nothing of that Sunday morning in August when he was pulled from his grandfather’s grasp as they walked hand in hand along the beach.
John Ryan Jr., chief of the East Hampton Town lifeguards, remembers the incident “like it was yesterday.” He was at nearby Indian Wells Beach overseeing a Jet Ski lifeguard training session with a new “sled device” that had arrived just a day before. The sled attaches to the back of a Jet Ski and allows for easier transportation of a victim. Mr. Ryan had been talking to Job Potter, a town councilman at the time, about the watercrafts’ value at unprotected beaches.
Training had gone a little late, and Mr. Ryan told the 18-year-old lifeguard piloting the Jet Ski to head back east to Atlantic Avenue. He was carrying two other lifeguards as part of the training exercise. As he got close to shore, a wave broke sooner than anticipated. The Jet Ski hit a sharp incline in shallow water at high tide, and careened about 10 yards before striking the toddler. The pilot tried to jump off and pull the watercraft back, but was unable to. Coverage of the accident said his leg was pinned.
Eliot’s father, Dick Fisher, was sitting below the first lifeguard stand with his wife and some friends, watching the training. He recalled seeing the Jet Ski hit the wave too fast and then hit a boy. “I jumped up and saw the bathing suit we had put on Eliot that morning and I felt terror unlike anything ever before experienced,” he said.
In the moments it took to reach his son, the 800-pound Jet Ski had been lifted off him. “Eliot had been pressed faced down in the sand,” his father said. As a former emergency medical technician, he knew not to twist the child’s neck, and he stabilized it and turned him over to make sure he was breathing.
Michael Sarlo, now the East Hampton Town Police Chief, was an officer back in 2002, off duty and enjoying a beach day with a relative, who happened to be a surgeon doing his residency. He was one of the first to treat the child. “I believe a group of us helped pulled the ski up so the child could be freed,” Chief Sarlo said. “The sound of the Jet Ski hitting the kid in the back is one I won’t forget.”
Chief Ryan drove down from Indian Wells to Atlantic Avenue to find a chaotic scene. Most of the people on the beach thought the lifeguard had run the child over, he said. “It was almost a lynch mob,” he said, recalling that police had put the lifeguard in a marine patrol vehicle to keep him away from the crowds. “The poor lifeguard was a mess,” Chief Sarlo said.
“It was an awful day. It was an absolutely awful day,” Chief Ryan said. He said the Atlantic Avenue lifeguards should have cleared beachgoers from the area, and that all the town lifeguards learned a valuable lesson that day, which fortunately came without a major consequence.
The Amagansett Fire Department ambulance strapped Eliot to a backboard and took him to Southampton Hospital. “And then, after all that drama,” Mr. Fisher said, “a thorough examination showed that he was completely unharmed.” The boy was released from the hospital later that day and went home with a teddy bear given to him by the Fire Department.
The incident never stopped Eliot from loving the water. “I’ve been out here since I was little. I love it,” said the soon-to-be high school junior, who lives in Tucson and summers in Amagansett. Since he was 9, he’s taken part in the town’s junior lifeguard program, and even been rescued from rip currents a few times.
He hasn’t saved anybody — yet, he said — since becoming a certified lifeguard the day after his 16th birthday. He’s even had training as a Jet Ski rescue swimmer. His summer is coming to an end a little earlier than most, however, since Arizona schools begin next week. Chief Ryan said he’s been a great addition to his crew and a “good, good kid” who is yet another testament to the junior lifeguard program.
All the lifeguards at Atlantic Avenue Beach seem to know the story of what happened when Eliot was just a tot, and everyone, the police and lifeguard chief included, is impressed and thankful he’s able to stand watch all these years later. As for Eliot, he said he’s just there to help people, like all the other lifeguards. “I don’t feel any different, because I don’t remember it at all.”