Public Rescue Tube Deployment in Hawai’i

This blog was written and submitted by Bridget Kaumeheiwa Velasco, Public Health Planner with the State of Hawaii Department of Health.

“They’re going to get in the water for a rescue anyway, so let’s prevent them from becoming a statistic too!” 

A public rescue tube in Princeville, Kauai

In 2008, a rash of drownings and serious ocean rescues conducted by locals on Kauai Island, Hawaiʻi prompted residents to hang a rescue tube on some shrubbery at a remote beach on Kauai for anyone to use in case of emergency. Since that first tube, more than 1,000 rescue tubes have taken up residence across the US, several hundred in Kauai and the other major islands in Hawai’i, coordinated by the non-profit Rescue Tube Foundation.  Similar programs have been established in other countries including South Africa and Australia. A new evaluation of the public rescue tube program in Hawai’i was recently published in the journal Injury Prevention.

You can read the full study here.

Lifesaving tubes, rings, torpedoes, and other floatation devices have been carried and used for decades by professionally trained lifeguards in all parts of the world. A critical piece of rescue equipment, Dr. Monty Downs, emergency room physician and president of the Kauai Lifeguard Association (KLA), has compared the lifeguard's rescue tube to the doctor's stethoscope. As amazing as these water safety men and women are, they can’t be everywhere all the time, and research has shown that most coastal drowning events happen away from professional trained rescuers. 

Hawai’i public rescue tubes are differentiated from the shorter red professional tubes and designed to keep several people afloat as they await professional rescue.  Would-be bystander rescuers are advised to toss or hand the tube to a person in distress in the water, and to only enter if they are competent swimmers and will not put themselves at risk. Still, public rescue equipment are not prevalent in many locations due to valid concern over liability, vandalism, stealing, and tempting bystanders to put themselves at risk continue. There are many anecdotal reports of bystanders using the public rescue tubes for successful rescues, but sometimes getting into trouble themselves. They are alive and well, and report that the only thing that saved them was having the public rescue tube with them when they went in for the save.

Importantly, the recent study of the public rescue tube deployment in Hawai'i determined that these devices in fact did have a “protective effect” on rescuer drownings on Kauai during the years studied.

Researchers noted that there was a lower proportion of statewide rescuer drownings on Kauai during the period after the tubes were deployed (13%) compared to the years prior (60%).  They reported one rescuer drowning (which didn’t involve a rescue tube) during the 2008-2017 period (after the tubes were deployed) compared to 8 rescuer drownings from 1993-2007. The research proposes that the gold standard of professional lifeguards may (while abiding by the directions written on the tubes) be safely supplemented by the availability of public rescue tubes at locations or times when lifeguards are not available to help safeguard those caring bystanders who are going to go to help one way or another!