Visitors to Surfside Beach now have no excuse not to wear a life jacket, thanks to Schlitterbahn Galveston, which donated nearly 1,200 of the brand-new lifesaving devices to the tiny Brazoria County community.
The transaction took a few weeks to complete, but once the two parties worked out the legalities (and after the jackets had been offered to other lifeguarding agencies in the region), a pair of Schlitterbahn staffers loaded them into a box truck and delivered them to Surfside earlier this week.
“This is life-changing,” Surfside Police Chief Philip Hester told Chron Friday. “We were getting 20 life jackets here and 10 life jackets there [and] the life jackets, they’re 30-40 apiece…