State parks are in a lifeguard pinch as summer gets started in Maine.
Interested in the job?
They’ll toss in the red swimsuit and sunblock.
Stephen Curtis, manager for the southern region of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Land, said the last five years have seen fewer and fewer applications from people both qualified and physically fit seeking lifeguard posts.
State parks need 55 people to fill the tall, white chairs. Forty went to the state-run lifeguard academy last week to pick up extra training before they hit the beach. A few more hires have been made since.
“It always seems to me we’re a half-dozen down (at the start), but it comes together,” Curtis said.
Locally, Reid State Park had no openings and Popham Beach was hiring one more lifeguard. Mount Blue State Park and Range Pond in Poland were each down one guard. Sebago Lake was down two.
Parks will focus on maintaining full coverage on weekends, Curtis said. When in doubt, call ahead to check.
Lifeguard positions start at $9.47 an hour, full-time, for 12 weeks starting this week. Applicants need YMCA or Red Cross training. The state recruits at swim teams, universities and job fairs.
“My theory is the lifeguarding business is becoming more complicated,” Curtis said. There’s more awareness about skin cancer, more awareness of disease.
Each year, state park lifeguards make 20 to 30 rescues, as many as a dozen from serious situations, he said.
Joline Banaitis, recreation superintendent at the Lewiston Recreation and Parks Department, said she’d hired all 15 certified lifeguards she needed to work poolside at Kennedy Park and accompany field trips. Three were with a group of kids at Barefoot Beach in New Gloucester on Thursday.
“We’ve had a good return with our lifeguards. (I’m) just very pleased with that,” she said.
Her counterpart in Auburn, Doug Beck, said he’d recently hired the last of his guards to watch over Lake Auburn’s outlet beach. It opens early next week.
Carly Lochala of New Sharon, a swim instructor in the Farmington Parks and Recreation Department, said she started out as a lifeguard almost four years ago, when she was 15.
Her department had enough lifeguards. Its only snag: Trying to find a one-week fill-in to give one of their guards a break this summer.
Being a lifeguard “can be a little hard on the nerves sometimes. You are responsible for making people stay alive,” she said.
There can be issues with negligence and liability, Lochala added. It also rained a lot last summer – sitting outside wasn’t so fun.
Comments are no longer available on this story