Southampton Village Ocean Rescue Hosts Its First Ever Open Water Swim

Southampton Village Ocean Rescue held its first ever “S-mile Swim Challenge” at Coopers Beach on Saturday morning, August 20, and, according to the numbers, it was a very successful event.

Chief Michelangelo Lieberman said that over 60 swimmers participated in the event that gave three different distance open water options: a quarter-mile, half-mile or full-mile swim along the beach. Comparatively, Lieberman said, the Red Devil Swim put on by East Hampton Volunteer Ocean Rescue, which Southampton models itself after, has been going on for over a dozen years and pulls in close to 100 participants each year.

Lieberman thanked SVOR Secretary Alex King for largely putting the event together herself. All proceeds went to SVOR, a volunteer nonprofit organization that is particularly vital to a beach community such as Southampton.

“We did turn a profit, but there are a lot of expenses associated with the event such as securing buoys, anchors, banners,” Lieberman explained. “It was a very successful event. We had great conditions, which you never know what you’re going to get the morning of. But at the end of the day, no one got hurt, everyone had fun and we do anticipate maybe having 100 people next year.”

Lieberman admitted that if there is going to be that many people next year, things will have to be tightened up, logistically.

“With it being our first event,” he said, “things probably could have run a little smoother, so there are things we can do to really tighten up, and if we plan on having that many people next year, we’re going to have to do a lot more tightening.”

The reason for the open water swim event now, Lieberman said, was two fold. First it was to bring SVOR and the community together by having both participants and spectators support a vital local emergency response unit. Also, it simply allowed for swimmers to challenge their strength, endurance and resiliency in the ocean.

Still considered in its infancy when compared to similar EMS such as fire departments, founded in 2018, SVOR’s mission is to respond to water rescues in the ocean and bays, year-round, at all unprotected beaches in Southampton Village. SVOR is dedicated to making safe and expeditious water rescues via proven and effective water rescue techniques.

Lieberman said the group just recently received its first personal watercraft, a Jet Ski, to help aid members on rescues, something he gave a shout out to Southampton Village Mayor Jesse Warren for securing for them. Having that “tool in the tool shed,” as Lieberman put it, is what really allowed SVOR to start thinking about having its first major event of the year, such as this past weekend’s open water swim.

“We have guards sitting on stands, but they can only oversee a small portion of the beach, and then we can have a few guards out there in the water, but when you have a swim that’s a mile long, you really need to be mobile and that’s where the Jet Ski comes in,” he said. “Now again, conditions were a light wind with no swell, but even then we had to pull a couple people out of the water who were struggling. We have to be able to do that safely, but it’s also an opportunity to show our capabilities and improvements and again the Jet Ski really allows for that. Personal watercrafts were not really used for rescues until the past decade or so, but now they’ve really become synonymous with a lot of rescues. East Hampton has four to six of them. We didn’t have any up until very recently. It’s a tool in the tool shed that we didn’t have before.”

As of right now, the organization serves Southampton Village and its unprotected beaches. In the future, the organization could expand to cover all of Southampton Town, Lieberman said, but it’s up to local lawmakers to push for that. He said that he had been working with Town Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni on that idea, and to find a home for the organization. It would, Lierberman said, open up the amount of room to house equipment and to have organizational meetings. As a volunteer group, Lieberman said it’s not up to him and his members to push for that and that the onus is more the elected officials’ part.

That’s not to say, though, that his group wouldn’t be able to cover the entire town. Opening up the group’s services to the town would also open up its membership, particular to that on the western side of town, to many residents who are already very capable lifeguards and would be able to slide right in to a number of different roles.

As Lieberman put it, the hard part is not getting the number of people to help, it’s getting the equipment, the space to house that equipment, in addition to procuring funds. Teaching people how to become first responders, which is the main difference he said between a lifeguard and an ocean rescue member, is another thing they would have to do, but is certainly doable. All levels of government follow NIMS, or National Incident Management System, and all the guidelines are laid out there.

“What we’re learning to do is coordinate with local EMS, fire, police and ambulance units and how to respond with them. Since our inception, we’ve been figuring out how do we fit into that culture, and thus far it’s been working out wonderful, of course with the help of a lot of people,” Liberman said. “East Hampton Ocean Rescue has been a wonderful trailblazer for us. Chief Barnaby Friedman has been super supportive. Sue Harteau and Chris Wetter with the Southampton Village Police have welcomed us with open arms as has Alfred Callahan with the village fire department as has the EMS chief. They’ve all been around for a long time and know how the system works. We’re all in it together, we just happen to know how to rescue people from the water, but it takes a commitment of first responders to do all of that.”