Nassau County launches rip current safety initiative at beaches
NICKERSON BEACH PARK, Long Island (WABC) -- Nassau County officials announced a new rip current safety initiative at beaches throughout the county.
Amid warnings for recent shark bites off Long Island beaches, officials want beachgoers to know about other dangerous threats.
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman on Wednesday declared it Rip Current Awareness Month.
It can be tiring to fight a rip current and one safety tip is not to fight it -- swim parallel to the shoreline and wait for the tide to take you in.
Also make sure to swim near a lifeguard and pay attention to the signage.
"Your changes of being bit by a shark are one in a million, maybe more, but your chances of getting caught in a rip current are much much more probable, so we have to know how to negotiate our way out of rip currents," Blakeman said.
Blakeman was joined by a mother who lost her daughter to a rip current four years ago in Cabo. Alexandra was a stellar athlete and gymnast but was tragically unaware of rip currents.
"My daughter Alexandra who was our heart whom we lost four years ago to a rip current, an unsuspecting rip current, and she had absolutely no idea what to do in a rip current," Josephine de Moura said. "She was literally just standing on a sandbar, she was not even swimming. Because she's so strong, I'm sure she thought she could fight it, and that's when she tired out."
Now de Moura has made it her mission to educate the public about rip currents. She said it is what her daughter would have wanted.
Officials unveiled eight new signs that lay out specific safety tips.
"If I can save one family from the devastation that my family and I are going through, this is my mission," de Moura said.
So far this year, more than 60 people nationwide have died from rip currents.
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