Elite Water Rescue Team Splashes Down in Westhampton

Sunny September days combined with the ramping up of riptide-creating hurricane season can be deadly at ocean beaches. Seasonal lifeguards are gone, and while beachgoers are not supposed to go into unprotected waters, they do. And for Quogue Village Police Chief Chris Isola, that often means cops have to go into the water after distressed swimmers.

With that in mind, coupled with the potential for off-season ocean emergencies, he, longtime Southampton Town lifeguard Paul Bass and Bob Bancroft, chief of the Westhampton War Memorial Ambulance, have announced the creation of a new water rescue team under the banner of the ambulance corps.

The idea arose during a high school baseball game. Bass and Isola started chatting about the lack of ocean coverage on Dune Road, a topic the chief was familiar with.

“I’ve been working on Dune Road for 30 years, and we don’t have a response to ocean emergencies at the unprotected areas,” Isola said.

Bancroft noted that for nine years in a row, at least one person has drowned in the ocean off Dune Road. In the United States, every year, an average of five police officers drown trying to rescue swimmers.

“It’s all off hours and it’s all off season,” Bass pointed out.

“So that’s where we came from,” Isola said. “It would be great to have a volunteer squad of lifeguards to respond.”

Bass sought input from John Ryan Jr., East Hampton’s chief lifeguard, and the neighboring town’s Chief Harbormaster, Ed Michels, who work with East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue — Ryan’s a EHVOR member. Isola recalled when the team came from East Hampton to assist after a plane plunged into the Atlantic just south of Quogue in 2018, “I thought, ‘These guys are amazing.”’

Bass has been a lifeguard since 1976. “Paul’s really got the expertise on this,” Isola said. “This is really an elite group of lifeguards.”

Crediting Isola and Bancroft, Bass quipped, “I’m just an old guy who knows a lot of young studs.” As a longtime lifeguard, coach and teacher in Westhampton Beach, he was able to reach out to amass an experienced team of professional lifeguards, military veterans, airmen from the 106th Rescue Wing, police officers, a bay constable, ambulance corps members, engineers, school teachers and even a doctor.

“I know a lot of really good kids,” Bass said simply.

They aren’t merely certified lifeguards, or even highly trained ocean lifeguards. They are, he said “the cream of the crop … very, very, experienced.”

“This crew is exceptional and were picked that way,” Bass emphasized.

Getting the volunteers was the easy part.

“It took a long time to figure out the red tape,” Bass reported.

Westhampton War Memorial Ambulance’s district runs through Quogue Village, the villages of Westhampton Beach and Westhampton Dunes, and western parts of Southampton Town. Organizers learned the municipal insurance companies balked at providing coverage for a person who might respond to emergencies in differing municipalities. “It was getting very complicated, and it was getting warmer,” Isola said. It made more sense to approach the ambulance company, said the police chief, who’s been a member of the ambulance company since he was a teen.

And before they even went to Bancroft, they had assembled the team. “Paul positioned this to the point where, how could anyone say no?” Isola related.

That’s when the pair approached Bancroft. “When I proposed it to him, the chief was all over it, ” Isola related.

“It was a no-brainer,” Bancroft said. “What we do on a daily basis is try to make people’s lives better, try to save those that are hurt, that are sick, or are drowning.”

He noted a lot of people don’t understand the sacrifices the 50 members — 65 now counting the new water rescue team — are willing to make, to literally put themselves in harm’s way to help somebody else.

“So when Chris came to me with this, knowing our statistics of water rescues, people in distress, people we’ve lost in the last decade, knowing the season was in full swing and that shortly the season would be over and that’s when a lot of the noncoverage calls happen, it really was an easy decision,” Bancroft said.

The ambulance company covers 10.5 miles of beachfront property on the ocean side, plus 60 miles of bayside waterfront.

The ambulance chief spoke of a recent training exhibition he watched.

“I was highly impressed,” he said. “They worked liked they’ve been doing it together for 10 years.”

Beyond the training demonstration, the team was called upon soon after they got the greenlight earlier this month, responding to two calls on September 10. Organizers were pleased with how quickly the team responded.

Team members are equipped with a rescue torpedo, rope, a pair of swim fins and a rash guard shirt — that’s all they need, Bass opined. “When I approached Bob,” Isola concluded, “I said all they want is an opportunity to save lives — and maybe a beach sticker.”