Thanks to a freakish combo of intense wind conditions, bad timing, and unsecured beach equipment, a lifeguard in Asbury Park, New Jersey, wound up in the hospital this week. She was impaled by a runaway beach umbrella. The very thing you thought was just an irrational fear just happened in real life, ensuring that you’ll never shake this fear for the rest of your life.
According to officials, the incident unfolded Wednesday morning when a woman, who was a lifeguard on duty, noticed a large shady beach umbrella, unmoored from its sandy confinement. It was soaring through the air, swept up in a stiff wind.
She tried to catch it before it fell to protect beachgoers, but the umbrella fully flipped around so that the fabric end was suddenly facing away from her, and she was face-to-face with the stabby end.
A Runaway Beach Umbrella Turned Skewered a New Jersey Lifeguard
And stab her it did, my friends. The umbrella’s stake, designed for puncturing deep into tightly compacted beach sand, blasted straight through the front of her left shoulder and stuck out the back of her arm.
First responders, including fellow lifeguards, rushed to her aid, treating her until the Asbury Park Fire Department showed up. Fire Chief Kevin Keddy described the scene with the required clinical calm, saying that the impaled lifeguard was conscious and a “tough young woman” after being kebabbed by beach accessories.
Firefighters had to cut both ends of the protruding umbrella stake before removing the middle bit embedded in her. She was stabilized and rushed to a hospital, where she was reported in stable condition.
The whole scenario sounds like it’s ripped straight out of a Final Destination movie. It’s a sobering reminder that the beach sucks and is always trying to kill you.
Whether it’s sending sharks to nibble at your feet, jellyfish to trick you into thinking dousing yourself with piss is a viable treatment, burning you to a crisp beneath the sun’s killer rays, or trying to stab you with the umbrellas designed to protect you from the killer rays, the beach is an openly hostile environment unfit for human life.
If you dare attempt the beach’s blood thirst, please heed the advice of the aforementioned Chief Keddy. He took some time to explain to the public that when you’re planting an umbrella, make sure it’s really secured in the sand, and always carry it with the point down, because you aren’t a pole-vaulter.
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