No Lifeguards On Wilmington Beach When Man Drowned

WILMINGTON, MA -- While the 19-year-old man who drowned on Wednesday was swimming outside of a designated swimming area, but even if he had been in the beaded area there would have been no lifeguard available. That's because the mostly high school and college students who worked as lifeguards at Silver Lake this summer were finished for the season on Aug. 12. The town has struggled to fill lifeguard positions in recent years and has already started trying to fill the positions for the 2019 season.

The town employed between 12 and 14 part-time lifeguards this summer. Wilmington Town Manager Jeffrey Hull told the Lowell Sun, which first reported this story, that people are free to swim outside of the designated areas or when the beach has no lifeguards, but "to a large measure they're really swimming at their own risk because we don't supervise swimming beyond the buoy area."

Wilmington has been offering counseling services for witnesses, first responders and residents impacted by last week's drowning.

For more on this story, see the Lowell Sun.

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Patch file photo.