An apparently suicidal man waded into San Francisco Bay on Monday, stood up to his neck, and waited. As the man drowned, police, fire crews, and others watched idly from the shore.
Why? Officials blamed a departmental policy, stemming from budget cuts, that prevented them from jumping in to save him.
Fifty-year-old Raymond Zack spent nearly an hour in the water before drowning. A crowd of about 75 people, in addition to first responders, watched from the beach in Alameda across the bay from San Francisco as Zack inched farther and farther away, sometimes glancing back, a witness told the San Jose Mercury News. "The next thing he was floating face down."
A volunteer eventually pulled Zack's lifeless body from the Bay.
Mike D'Orazi of the Alameda Fire Department said that, due to 2009 budget cuts, his crews lacked the training and gear to enter the water. And a Coast Guard boat couldn't access the area because the water was too shallow.
"The incident yesterday was deeply regrettable," D'Orazi said Tuesday. "But I can also see it from our firefighters' perspective. They're standing there wanting to do something, but they are handcuffed by policy at that point."
Alameda Police Lt. Sean Lynch also suggested his men did the right thing. "He was engaged in a deliberate act of taking his own life," Lynch told the Mercury News. "We did not know whether he was violent, whether drugs were involved. It's not a situation of a typical rescue."
But at a City Council hearing Tuesday night, some locals expressed outrage that Zack was left to die. "This just strikes me as not just a problem with funding, but a problem with the culture of what's going on in our city, that no one would take the time and help this drowning man," said one resident, Adam Gillitt.
The city said it would spend up to $40,000 to certify 16 firefighters in land-based water rescues.
One witness to the event told a local news station that Zack was looking at people on the shore. "We expected to see at some point that there would be a concern for him," said another.
If the man had been holding a gun to his head, would we expect rescue workers to try and wrestle it from him? Of course not. They have to put their own safety first. And trying to wrestle a 300 lb grown man ashore would certainly have put their safety in danger!
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If the man had been holding a gun to his head, would we expect rescue workers to try and wrestle it from him? Of course not. They have to put their own safety first. And trying to wrestle a 300 lb grown man ashore would certainly have put their safety in danger!
I tend to agree. Yes they are in a dangerous profession, but they should not be expected to place themselves in unreasonable danger. I think this one was a very hard call for all involved.
You and some others kept asking me why I think trying to save that man's life was the decent thing to do and why watching him drown was not an example of common decency....Your comment below is a part of my answer:
"Were they supposed to break policy and lose their jobs?"
They chose their jobs and the safe route of not getting involved due to policy, etc when their job is supposed to be putting themselves on the line for their fellow human beings...Not worrying about their job as being the most important and maybe not even their own lives, is what they signed up for when they took the job.
The civilian was the hero of this story, in my opinion......
Either way, the whole thing is an example of how tied up we are in this country--with rules, prejudices, assumptions, judgmental thinking and acting, etc. We need a way to get back to basics in this country.....Something as basic as trying to help a man that most likely did not want to die.....As we continue to grow in population, economic debt, new rules and policies and so on, we become more callous, more angry, more resentful....It scares me that the people in our country are slowly reminding me of the people in 3rd world countries, where death is an even more common occurrence and is looked upon with resignation or acceptance...Where life is no longer cherished, it is simply a burden to carry. You can see this pervasive attitude in many other areas, such as the way in which we treat our dead, or the way in which we follow along like sheep to be told by our government (or as some say, the hospitals, corporations, etc) what, how, when, and why we must do certain things...
This article isn't just about one simple incident, to me....It's a precursor, or warning of much worse to come in our country.
Ok, I am gonna be a little clearer. I am a fulltime firefighter (the FF of FF-PHRN), I have multiple experiences of water rescues and as part of the boat crew\water rescue of my dept. You dont understand how this is quite the challenge and NOT something a local YMCA can teach. He is 6'3, 280lb, 6ft of 50degree water, he doesnt want to just walk back in. Cant just throw him a line or a life vest that they dont even have. He will need to be forced in. So..this is actually a very challenging scope of practice to achieve.
BTW, We average 15 calls\day, no ping pong, but alot of training though, sleep whenever possible and situations ,as you stated, that are much worse than this. Thats kinda like saying nurses sit around the nurses station eating donuts.
However, I agree this is a policy issue. Were they supposed to break policy and lose their jobs and possibly their lives? They have local coast guard availabilty probably leading the FD cutting water rescue budget.
My point is that this is tragic but there are no fingers to point for the inability to act here. The city council determines budget. Changing the policy, by that chief, was merely a political move until the FD is actually equipped.
Would it change anyone's mind to know that the families of these men or women would have VERY likely been denied death benefits in the event of a fatality because they were making a rescue for which they weren't trained/equiped for? Has anyone ever been faced with that type of decision before?
Would you endanger you nursing license to perform a procedure that was needed right then but out of your scope of practice and you hadn't been trained to perform?
Your very life is required for the job? They should put "non-martyrs need not apply" some place on the application. There were 75 people on that shore. I'm sure the responders told people to not jump in the water but it's not like they had folks in a cage. If the people present felt the odds were on their side then why didn't anyone else jump in? Without the right equipment or training a lay person who is strong swimmer has just as much of a chance to successfully complete a rescue as an FF who hasn't been trained to do water rescue.
What's crazy and sad to me is that the public has decided with our voting trends to not pay the required taxes to maintain the social safety net but expect first responders and all health care professionals to do more with less even to the point of sacrificing their lives.
They chose their jobs and the safe route of not getting involved due to policy, etc when their job is supposed to be putting themselves on the line for their fellow human beings...Not worrying about their job as being the most important and maybe not even their own lives, is what they signed up for when they took the job.
This article isn't just about one simple incident, to me....It's a precursor, or warning of much worse to come in our country.
Would it change anyone's mind to know that the families of these men or women would have VERY likely been denied death benefits in the event of a fatality because they were making a rescue for which they weren't trained/equiped for? Has anyone ever been faced with that type of decision before?
Would you endanger you nursing license to perform a procedure that was needed right then but out of your scope of practice and you hadn't been trained to perform?
You're making the assumption that noone there was trained and everyone there was ignorant of what/how to do it. I bet the civilian wasn't trained in body retrieval, either.
The coast guard boat couoldn't go anyfurther because the water was too shallow and the water was shallow enough to watch this man walk for several hundred yards and kept looking back and they FF couldn't try to walk towards him? I just can't wrap my mind that professionals just watched......Did they watch because he was committing sucide? Would they have tried if it was just someone swimming and go into trouble? sad...
I doubt first responders were there as he was walking into the water. Why would they be? They were called AFTER he had been in the cold water and wouldn't come out. In the news story it said people had tried to coax him out of the water and he wouldn't come out.
You're making the assumption that noone there was trained and everyone there was ignorant of what/how to do it. I bet the civilian wasn't trained in body retrieval, either.
They may have been trained at some point, but two year old training is darn near worthless. They certainly weren't equipped. In the real world, you make risk/benefit analysis and risk you life ONLY with a high chance of success. In this case, the risk was massive, the chance of success low.
If you will read the story, you'll see the patient was unconscious and closer to shore when retrieved. Again, different situation.
I suggest you learn a bit more about what really goes on during a rescue, and take less of your information from movies and TV.
The epitaph: He/she died a hero on their tombstone will feed their surviving family.
Would it change anyone's mind to know that the families of these men or women would have VERY likely been denied death benefits in the event of a fatality because they were making a rescue for which they weren't trained/equiped for? Has anyone ever been faced with that type of decision before?
Would you endanger you nursing license to perform a procedure that was needed right then but out of your scope of practice and you hadn't been trained to perform?
Exactly, just because you've seen something done or know what needs to be done doesn't mean that you're capable of doing it if you haven't been trained to do so! I read AN daily and I constantly see posts from nurses who complain that non-nurses are clueless about what a nurse does. So why are non-first responders and non-FF in this thread dissecting what they do for a living when unless you've done that job you have no clue!
Would you endanger you nursing license to perform a procedure that was needed right then but out of your scope of practice and you hadn't been trained to perform?
If the patient would die without the procedure, and I had knowledge of a way that might work, with no one else willing to do it- yes. I'm thinking, for example, intubation with no qualified staff available. The patient will die if I don't try, if I completely make a mess of it he'll still die, but family will know someone tried. Yes, I would do that.
I don't blame the firefighters who were under orders to stay on shore. They would have lost their jobs for disobeying. I'm talking about bystanders. I went swimming last week, and I can't see San Francisco waters being that much colder then Nova Scotia. The patient was up to his neck, the rescuer probably would have been able to speak to him by going out within 10-20ft. Far enough to move away if he got aggressive. Rescuers can switch off if needed, and provide a show of support. They can also wade out and grab his body and attempt CPR, but only if they are close enough to get him before the current does.
An apparently suicidal man waded into San Francisco Bay on Monday, stood up to his neck, and waited. As the man drowned, police, fire crews, and others 
:lol2:
Purple_Scrubs, BSN, RN
1 Article; 1,978 Posts
If the man had been holding a gun to his head, would we expect rescue workers to try and wrestle it from him? Of course not. They have to put their own safety first. And trying to wrestle a 300 lb grown man ashore would certainly have put their safety in danger!