Wet ‘n Wild lifeguards called unqualified

Karen Zekan

Thursday, Aug. 21, 1997 | 10:06 a.m.

Wet 'n Wild is praising its lifeguards for rescuing a near-drowning victim from its wave pool, but an out-of-town family that witnessed the emergency described the guards involved as arrogant and unqualified.

Alfred and Roseanne Stavros said during a telephone interview Wednesday from their Illinois home that 9-year-old Thalia Solomon was within three feet of a lifeguard station and could have been lifted onto the nearby ledge, but guards instead wasted several minutes towing her 70-pound body by raft more than 30 feet to the pool's shallow end.

The couple also described seeing a fumbled poolside resuscitation effort, with one guard breathing into an unsealed, upside-down mouth mask without pinching off the child's nose or opening her airway, and a female guard who started laughing after being told to push on the victim's rib cage, not her stomach, to perform chest compressions.

"It was disgusting how incompetent they were," said Alfred Stavros, an attorney and a former certified lifeguard.

"A second is an hour to a drowning person. Those lifeguards stood around trying to decide what to do like it was a convention. They pushed you away like Gestapo unless you had a Wet 'n Wild T-shirt on. They didn't listen to anyone who knew CPR. If that girl dies, it's because of them."

Dan Bradley, Wet 'n Wild spokesman, said an ongoing internal investigation prevented him from commenting on the rescue. He also said he was not allowed to release the identities or experience levels of the guards involved.

All the guards remain actively employed and have been participating in the investigation, Bradley said.

"We are very happy with how they performed the rescue," Bradley said. "There will be a lot of people who will try to come out and tell their own version of what happened, but from everything we know now, they did what they were supposed to do."

Solomon remained hospitalized in very critical condition today, her status unchanged since paramedics rushed her Monday afternoon to Columbia Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

Frustrated by what they estimated to be more than 2,000 swimmers and rafters packed into the wave pool, the Stavros family was about to leave when they saw lifeguards jump in the water to save Solomon.

They suspect the girl may have been pinned underwater by one of the rafters riding the waves, as had happened earlier that day to two of the Stavros' three teenage sons.

"My sons are all strong swimmers and they were able to push the rafts up and off them to get their heads above the water," Roseanne Stavros said. "If the same thing happened to that little girl, she probably didn't have the strength."

No official determination has been made about how long the child was underwater or what caused her to nearly drown.

Two young boys have been credited with pulling the girl's limp body from the bottom of the pool.

Wet 'n Wild refused to release Monday's attendance figures, but Alfred Stavros said a manager told him it was one of the most crowded days of the summer.

"He said there were 5,000 police officers there that day and a picnic from the Monte Carlo," he said. "It was wall-to-wall people."

Roseanne Stavros said she had taken pictures of the packed pool moments before the near drowning because she was shocked at the crowd. Those 35mm shots, and the rest of a roll her husband shot of what he described as a horrific rescue, are what they intend to turn over to any attorney should the case go to court.

Only once did the couple see the lifeguards turn the girl on her side to get water out, Alfred Stavros said, and it was after guards carried her upright from the raft to the spot where they attempted to revive her.

"They hadn't even burped her when they put the plastic mask over her mouth," he said. "Even my 13-year-old son heard one of them say, 'You got the mask on wrong, maybe it's upside down.' She had such a narrow face, the mask never sealed, so one of the guys tried pushing the mask down to make it seal.

"They didn't even try to breathe into her without the mask. She's a little girl -- you'd think she had AIDS or the plague, the way they were treating her."

Lifeguards were able to get some water and mucous out of the girl's body, but, when she was placed again on her back, he said, "her stomach was so distended it was above her chest -- there was that much water in her."

The Stavroses had been sitting next to Solomon's family that afternoon and noticed that many in their group were swimming in clothes. Solomon, they said, had on a tank top and shorts.

"It looked like maybe they didn't have much money and all the parents wanted was for their kids to have fun," Roseanne Stavros said. "The lifeguards viciously pushed her father away when he tried to help his little girl. It was just gut-wrenching to see it happen."

Messages left at the hospital for the family were not returned.

"I have nothing to gain by being critical of what these lifeguards did," Alfred Stavros said. "We just don't want this to happen again to anyone else. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's that lifeguards should be trained and able to perform rescues."