When the Foot Hits The Fin

   With storm season swells on the horizon here in the North Atlantic, it's worth taking note of what's in the old board bag when it comes to first aid. During a recent surf this past spring in north Jersey the waves were macking, and fellow ape Brian paddled into a steep one, nearly making the drop, but in the froth he took a swift fin ding to his foot. It was just shy of needing stitches. Thankfully, from growing up in a medical household in Florida, having no car for the last 10 years, and hunting for big days at Rockaway and Long Beach I've learned to carry some first-aid essentials. 

   After the thrashing, Brian calmly paddled over saying he thought he took a hit, and spun around to show us his foot. Upon first glance, I thought it was a much bigger flapper than it was. I instantly ran down the list in my head of all the items I had back at his car...definitely antiseptic of some sort, and a few old-but-sterile gauze pads for anything "gnarly" (but which probably wouldn't do much in the event of a serious wound). I was pretty confident it was enough to patch him up so I told him specifically where to find it as he reluctantly made the call to end his session.  As Justin and I pondered what to do in the maxing long-period swell, we decided we should check on Brian.  

   Once we all regrouped back on dry land, we made due with what supplies we had, doused it with fresh water and fashioned an ace bandage out of a plastic shopping bag. Afterward he carefully drove us to a nearby grocery store where we stocked up on the essentials and properly treated the gash. With his foot since healed, he is back in the water, but we had all taken home the valuable lesson of traveling with some type of first aid gear. Even if you're not surfing mysto reefs alone down some steep, no-beach cliffs, you can still get hit by your board on a fluke wipe-out, or hell, by someone else's wipeout. There are basic things that might come in handy should anyone suffer an injury. Below is a list of handy items that may save your skin...and maybe even the stuff underneath. 

- Antiseptic like hydrogen-peroxide for your rock, reef, metal, glass or creature injuries
- New Skin Liquid Bandage w/ antiseptic spray is good on medium to large abrasions 

- Sterile gauze pads

- Medical tape

- An ACE bandage

- Adhesive bandages and regular Band-Aids for small cuts and abrasions 

- Aloe or hydrocortisone lotion for gnarly sunburn, skin rashes or jellyfish stings  

- Tweezers for urchins spines or pieces of reef embedded in your skin
- Scissors or a cutting device of some sort
- Ibuprofen (2-4) for pain relief and anti-inflammation (if you can't do ice compressions)

- Sterile gloves for protecting the injured and the "medic" from infections
- Duct tape can't hurt either because you never know

   Keeping some of these items on you when you go to the beach could mean the difference between calling it a day and getting back out in the lineup, or even going to hospital versus going home.

- As a bonus, watch this medic demonstrate how to administer CPR here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPEFskCrdhQ

Also:

Outside Magazine's Guide to First Aid: Rescuing a Drowning Victim

Outside Magazine's Guide to First Aid - First Aid Kit
(*But don't take 12 ibuprofen like they suggest. As seen here, 200-600mg in 12 hours is a safe bet. And always use on a full stomach. Too much Ibuprofen is known to cause stomach ulcers, but it is far safer for your liver than its widely-used counterpart, acetaminophen, aka Tylenol.)

photos by Albert Shelton and Brian Wengrofsky

Post Rockalyptic Landscape

Today Rebecca and I rode our bikes the roughly 15 miles to Rockaway Beach.  I loaded up a UPS/battery backup unit on the back (to help folks charge phone batteries), Rebecca packed some food and off we went.  Once we crossed the Marine Park/Gil Hodges bridge we saw lots of homes pumping water from the basement, and mud everywhere.

As soon as we hit 116 St things began to get weird.

The combination of flood and fire at 114 St has created a post-apocalyptic landscape that looked like a war zone.  Smoking, and in spots still flaming ruins of buildings and muddy sand covered everything.  Fences were twisted, cars were piled up on each other in parking lots.  Search and rescue crews from other states swaggered around, as if trying to project an image of control, but yet seemed conspicuously listless, as if under no command.  And that was just the beginning.

We arrived on 96 St.  The apartment we had been scheduled to move in to last Sunday had mud all over the door and exterior wall, and the high water mark was visible which immediately told us the interior had been flooded.  We opened the door to find muddy carpets and soggy sheet rock, and damage to the doorknob suggested would-be looters had tried to jimmy the lock.  We moved on.

The boardwalk is gone as far as the eye can see.  The only part remaining is the concrete foundations, which lends a surreal Planet of the Apes kind of feeling, especially with waves breaking peacefully in the background.

We arrived to 90 St and Rockaway Beach Blvd to find cars stranded in the middle of the intersection which is now a lake.

On 91 St, a massive section of boardwalk has come to rest atop a mini-Cooper, complete with intact benches and streetlight still erect.  Some local residents stoked a bonfire in the street, adding to the post-civilization feeling.

The bungalow is still standing, despite having taken on 18" of seawater, muddy surfboards were everywhere, having been stirred about by the sloshing, and the entry alley is one long sand dune.  Shaw kept us in a good mood with jokes but summed up what we were all thinking by admitting he didn't know where to start.

The last stop was the Rockaway Beach Surf Club and friends that live next door.  Brandon D'Leo was on site cleaning up, and told the story of watching the ocean send the boardwalk down 91st on Monday night's massive tide surge, to the point where the street light was bumping against his 2nd floor apt.  

The surge in the shaping bay hit nearly 5 feet, sending surfboards, containers and power tools everywhere.  Most of the fiberglass is ruined, probably most of the tools, and the cleanup is going to be major.  At least the blanks, mounted high up on the wall, were spared.

J Scott K told me Monday night was the scariest thing he'd ever lived through.  The neighbors piled into the 2nd floor of his house as water rapidly rose in the space of 15 minutes to become a raging river of seawater, mud, debris and sewage, swamping his truck and causing his first floor to vanish beneath the waves.  How must that have felt for him and Lois, to look down from the 2nd floor loft on rapidly rising water levels inside their home, probably in near darkness, I can scarcely imagine.

I have to admit being really impressed with the humor and strength of character I saw on display.  Hard times and a lot of rebuilding are ahead.  But as we dropped off some food and batteries and prepared for the long ride home, Keone paused from cleaning mud out of his place and stopped me.  "Have you seen the waves out there?  They're not looking too bad!"

And so Rockaway lives.

If you'd like to help, check out TimeOutNY's excellent list of places you can plug in.

One Beach the film

One Beach is a great film about preserving the ocean and the beaches we love so much. I like that it's a positive film promoting positive solutions to plastics. Kevin Cunningham of Spirare Surfboards makes an appearance to talk about how he make sustainable surf craft and uses ocean debris to make fins. Take 20 mins and watch this film!

the sea blob