…outside his company’s designated “zone.”
The man was some 1,500 feet outside the company’s protection zone in an area where signs warn visitors to swim at their own risk, a supervisor with the company told CNN affiliate WPTV.
Even though he knew it was outside the company protection zone, Lopez ran into the ocean toward the struggling man and pulled him ashore.
The man, he said, had turned blue.
“He was having a lot of trouble breathing,” Lopez said.
A nurse at the beach tended to the victim until emergency medics arrived and rushed him off to a hospital.
It all happened so quickly that Lopez said he never got the man’s name and wonders if he is all right.
“It is killing me. I really want to know what happened to the guy,” he said.
WPTV reported Tuesday the man was admitted to the intensive care unit at Aventura Hospital.
After the near-drowning, Lopez said he was asked by his supervisor to complete an incident report.
15 things your lifeguard won’t tell you
“At that point I knew I was going to be fired. I knew had broken the rule,” Lopez said. “In those cases, we are supposed to call 911 and hope they get there in time.”
Company supervisor Susan Ellis told WPTV that Lopez was let go for violating company policy.
“We have liability issues and can’t go out of the protected area,” she said. “What he did was his own decision. He knew the company rules and did what he thought he needed to do.”
Since his firing, several other lifeguards have quit in protest, Lopez said.
The company is reportedly “reviewing the situation,” in which it fired a lifeguard for, you know, guarding life.
This is what an over-regulated, litigious society does for you.
Exactly.
And the righteous gets punished for his good deeds.
This too is “subversion” (setting upside-down).
But God sees this. And God is a tad stronger than the folly of men.
In this case I wouldn’t blame the lifeguard company. Instead I’d blame the tort lawyers (like John Edwards) who’ve created the environment that compels them to act this way in order to do business.
This is just another in a long list of preposterous situations that we’ve gotten into by letting fear of legal liability color our every move.
Anyone can sue anyone about anything so organizations walk on eggshells to avoid litigation that may go against them. In the meantime, the organization’s actual reason for being is often greatly compromised. Then we end up with nonsense like lifeguards being fired for saving lives.
Sure, why not? Nothing else makes any sense anymore either. Just go by what the policy or regulation says, and damn common sense.
At least Lopez has the satisfaction of having done a very good thing. It may not make it easier to feed himself or his family with his livelihood taken away though. I wish him – and those fellow lifeguards who quit in protest over his firing – the very best of luck in getting rehired very quickly.
(from the end of the article) “It was the moral thing to do,” Lopez said. “I would never pick a job over my morals.”
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Yes, I too can understand the company’s legal considerations.
Yes, I too believe that ambulance-chasers are a significant part of the problem.
Still, what we have here is a company which insists that profits are more important than virtue. We have a manager, or owner, who would rather save his or her own tush than someone else’s life.
We have a Shakespearean “My daughter! O my ducats! O my daughter!” without the daughter.
To paraphrase Aristotle freely: Judge a man by his actions, not his Corporate Mission Statement.
And Wm. James: Belief is nothing more, or less, than a preparedness to act in a given way in a given situation.
Everyone can see what Mr. Lopez believes. What of the other?
I do not need to follow my gut desire and damn to perdition the conscience of the manager, or owner, who made the firing decision. That person has already done so.
Kafka and Orwell were asked to comment and simply rolled over.
I’m glad that the lifeguard, even knowing the man was outside the zone and he would get fired, had the moral courage to save the swimmer anyway. It speaks well of him as a man.
– Hotel Florida.
“In those cases, we are supposed to call 911 and hope they get there in time.”
When seconds matter, help is only minutes away!