presentation for the board of directors of the American Red Cross Volunteer Life Saving Corps. What you’re seeing at first is footage from the beaches outside of Arequipa. The conditions are gnarly from a lifeguard standpoint; rough wave action, but not big enough waves to frighten people from entering the surf, and lots of sloughs and rip currents. You’ll see one of the guards using a boat fender as an improvised rescue buoy. This is how hey handle pretty much every case: one guard swims out to make contact with the victim (usually without a buoy. The guard in this simulated rescue uses a buoy) to wait until a team runs down the beach with a landline (the big spool of rope) which always has a buoy. This tethered buoy is swum out to the initial rescuer and the whole operation is then reeled in to shore. You should be able to see that the CPR being practiced on the beach is done with very poor technique and includes a move created by Dr. Safar as a way of forcing the victim to vomit out sea water. This has since been deemed to do more harm than good (clearing the stomach rather than the lungs and creating more opportunities for the victim to aspirate fluid).

    The Second bit of the film shows clips from our classes in Playa el Silencio, which is fairly straight forward. The last bit is a slideshow broken up with bits of info about our trip (over 200 students, X number of beaches were represented, etc).

    The last bit is an excerpt from the ARCVLSC’s bylaws, Article 1 Section 4, which state the use of educating and training the public in the ways of ocean rescue as a means to prevent drowning. This message gets to the core of what we at Salvavidas International are trying to accomplish and worked well as a segue into the next part of our presentation.