Lifeguard Trivia
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6correct to beat the crowd
This lifeguard trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the job, the science and the stories. On the job side: how lifeguards are trained and certified, the drowning chain, the instinctive drowning response, the four water entries, the 10/20 Protection Standard, rescue tubes and cans, CPR ratios and defibrillators, and how rip currents work. On the history side: the first US beach patrol in Atlantic City, the birth of surf lifesaving at Bondi in 1907, the RNLI and the Royal Life Saving Society, the world's largest lifeguard organisation, and lifesaving as a sport at the World Games. Then the pop culture: Baywatch (and the lifeguard who created it), Bondi Rescue, and famous people who started out on a lifeguard stand, from Ronald Reagan to Duke Kahanamoku. Roughly a third of the questions are easy for anyone who has spent a summer at the pool; the rest are for certified guards and lifesaving-sport nerds. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on lifeguarding, water safety and related topics, and each question links to the page that confirms it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01An AED, the device lifeguards are trained to use, treats cardiac arrest by delivering what?
An electric shock
An electric shock can stop a chaotic heart rhythm so that a normal beat has the chance to restart; the machine reads the rhythm itself and talks the user through each step.
Q 02In lifeguard doctrine, how is a unit's effectiveness best measured?
By the absence or reduction of drownings
Effectiveness is measured by the absence or reduction of drownings, not by rescues made; the drowning-chain model stresses prevention through education, warnings, denied access, supervision and survival training.
Q 03Which long-repeated poolside rule do health experts now dismiss as a myth?
Wait an hour after eating to swim
Wait an hour after eating to swim is the myth: digestion does draw some blood to the gut, but not enough to stop arm and leg muscles working, and the worst likely result is a minor cramp.
Q 04Which lifeguard water entry is the slowest, used when a spinal injury is suspected?
Slide-in
The slide-in is the slowest of the four standard entries: the guard eases in from the edge instead of jumping, so the water around an injured neck or spine is disturbed as little as possible.
Q 05Lifeguards are taught that a person who is actually drowning usually sounds like what?
Almost nothing
Almost nothing: in the instinctive drowning response the body puts breathing ahead of speech, so there is no shout and no wave, and the person may slip under within 20 to 60 seconds.
Q 06Under the international beach flag system, swimmers should stay between flags of which two colours?
Red and yellow
Red and yellow flags mark the stretch the lifeguards are watching, hence the Australian slogan 'swim between the flags'; surfboards and kayaks have to stay outside them.
Q 07The 10/20 rule gives pool lifeguards 10 seconds to spot trouble and 20 to do what?
Reach the swimmer
Reach the swimmer: the rule, devised by the consultants Jeff Ellis and Associates, means a guard must be able to scan the whole zone in 10 seconds and is posted no more than 20 seconds from any point in it.
Q 08Which James Bond actor worked as a milkman, a coffin polisher and a swimming-pool lifeguard before he found fame?
Sean Connery
Sean Connery took the lifeguard job, and polished coffins, back home in Edinburgh after the Royal Navy discharged him early with a stomach ulcer.
Q 09Which city's beach patrol, the oldest in the United States, was founded in the 1890s?
Atlantic City, New Jersey
The beach patrol of Atlantic City, New Jersey, formed in the early 1890s, is the oldest continuously operating beach patrol in the United States.
Q 10The California State Lifeguards are unusual in also performing what kind of duties?
Law enforcement
California State Lifeguards perform law enforcement duties: permanent state lifeguards are sworn State Park Peace Officers within California State Parks, with arrest powers alongside their rescue work.
Q 11Sydney's first surf clubs formed after a ban on what was lifted?
Daytime bathing
Daytime bathing in the sea had been against the law; once it was allowed, inexperienced swimmers got into trouble in the rips, drownings rose, and volunteers began patrolling the beaches.
Q 12Bondi and Bronte dispute the title of first surf club with which other club, across the harbour on Sydney's northern beaches?
Manly
Manly had organised lifesavers on its beach as early as 1899, yet in 2005 a panel of Surf Life Saving Australia historians ruled that Bondi's surf bathers were the first to form a club.
Q 13Which country's DLRG, founded after a pier collapse on its Baltic coast in 1912, is the world's largest volunteer lifesaving organisation?
Germany
Q 21Which Bee Gees hit is used to teach the right tempo for CPR chest compressions?
Stayin' Alive
Stayin' Alive runs at about 103 beats a minute, inside the 100 to 120 compressions a minute that guidelines call for; the BMJ said the song doubles as a metronome.
Q 22What oar-driven craft, once the standard beach rescue vessel, is still raced at Australian surf lifesaving carnivals?
Surf boat
The surf boat was built to punch out through breaking waves from the beach; inflatable boats and jet skis have taken over real rescues, but crews still race the old craft.
Q 23Which surf lifesaving race combines swim, board, ski and run legs in one event?
Ironman
Germany's DLRG was founded in Leipzig in 1913, the year after a pier at Binz on the island of Rügen gave way under a crowd waiting for a steamer and people drowned.
Q 14Which giant dog breed, with webbed paws and a water-resistant coat, is famed for hauling drowning people ashore?
Newfoundland
The Newfoundland began as a fishermen's working dog, pulling in nets and hauling carts, and its build, double coat and webbed paws make it a natural at water rescue.
Q 15In Brazil, most lifeguards are members of which service?
The state fire departments
The state fire departments employ most of Brazil's lifeguards, which gives them military status: each state's firefighter corps is a reserve force of the Brazilian Army.
Q 16Resusci Anne, the CPR training manikin, has the face of an unknown woman said to have drowned in which river?
The Seine
The Seine gave her the name L'Inconnue; toymaker Åsmund Laerdal put her face on his CPR manikin because he thought trainees would take more readily to a woman's face.
Q 17Which Indian state appointed the private firm Drishti Marine to guard its beaches in 2008?
Goa
Goa's government brought in Drishti Marine, whose lifesavers now watch dozens of beach stretches there; the firm has since been hired to guard six of Mumbai's beaches as well.
Q 18What is the inflatable flotation device with snap hooks that Pete Peterson developed in 1935 called?
The rescue tube
The rescue tube, first made as the inflatable 'Peterson tube' in 1935, has snap hooks so it can be clipped around a victim; the rigid rescue can is the other classic float.
Q 19In which direction should a swimmer caught in a rip current head to escape?
Parallel to the shore
Swim parallel to the shore: a rip is a narrow channel of water flowing seaward, so moving sideways out of it and then back to the beach at an angle beats fighting it head-on.
Q 20For adults, what chest-compression-to-breath ratio is taught in CPR?
30 to 2
Adult CPR runs at 30 to 2, thirty chest compressions and then two rescue breaths; for someone pulled from the water, rescuers are taught to give rescue breaths before the first compressions.
The Ironman shot Grant Kenny to stardom in 1980, when at 16 he won the Australian junior and senior titles back to back at the same championships.
Q 24Which network cancelled Baywatch after one season, before syndication made it a worldwide hit?
NBC
NBC dropped Baywatch in 1990 after one season; David Hasselhoff and fellow producers put up their own money to revive it for syndication, and it went on to claim more than a billion viewers.
Q 25At which Los Angeles County beach was most of Baywatch filmed?
Will Rogers State Beach
Will Rogers State Beach was the show's main location; it is named for the cowboy actor and humorist Will Rogers, whose widow Betty gave the family's oceanfront land to the state.
Q 26David Hasselhoff's Baywatch character, the head lifeguard, is named what?
Mitch Buchannon
Mitch Buchannon, played by David Hasselhoff, was the lieutenant in charge of the Baywatch lifeguards; the other names belong to fellow guards on the show.
Q 27After a 1999 move of setting and cast, Baywatch was retitled with which state's name?
Hawaii
Baywatch: Hawaii was the second choice: the producers first shot a pilot in Australia and announced Baywatch: Down Under, but residents of Sydney's Avalon Beach objected and the plan was dropped.
Q 28Which Olympic swimmer rescued eight men from a capsized boat at Newport Beach in 1925?
Duke Kahanamoku
Duke Kahanamoku made trip after trip on his surfboard to a fishing boat that had capsized in heavy surf in June 1925; the publicity led lifeguards across America to adopt boards as rescue gear.
Q 29In The Sandlot, which boy fakes drowning at the pool to steal a kiss from lifeguard Wendy Peffercorn?
Squints
Squints goes under on purpose so that Wendy will give him mouth-to-mouth, which gets the whole team thrown out of the pool; the film's epilogue has the two of them married with nine children.
Q 30The RNLI was founded in 1824 with a name describing its purpose as the preservation of life from what?
Shipwreck
Shipwreck was the word in its founding name: Sir William Hillary, who had seen ship after ship lost off the Isle of Man, appealed to the nation for a lifeboat service, and royal patronage soon followed.