Americans have reacted with stunned disbelief that a South Florida lifeguard has been fired for attempting to save a drowning man outside his beach patrol area on Monday.

The firing of Tomas Lopez, working for a private company contracted to the City of Hallandale Beach on Florida’s east coast, has touched off a storm of protest. Several lifeguards quit in protest.

“It has always been the city’s policy that if there is an actual emergency either inside the protected area or outside the protected area, that the lifeguard should go,” Peter Dobens, a spokesperson for the city, told the Star Thursday.

By Thursday night, the company that fired Lopez had offered him his job back, but he turned it down.

“It’s not out of spite or anything like that,” Lopez, 21, told Miami television station WSVN. “It’s just that after everything that has happened and everything that has been done, I’d rather not work for the company.”

Dobens said Lopez responded to a man struggling in the water about 500 metres from his lifeguard stand and “we were told by the company that the beach was still covered when he left.”

Lifeguards in Hallandale Beach work for Orlando-area company Jeff Ellis Management, which has the contract to supply lifeguard services for the city’s beaches and pools. The contract expires in September.

On Thursday night, Jeff Ellis, the head of the company, told Miami television station WSVN that his firm was wrong to dismiss Lopez after learning he did not leave his assigned area unattended.

“Having learned that information and validated it independently, I am of the opinion the gentleman attempted to do what most people would do, which is the right thing to help somebody who they believe is in distress,” he said.

Lopez told Florida media that he could not stand by and watch a person drown regardless of the rules, and added that he would do it again.

“It was a long run, but someone needed my help. I wasn’t going to say no,” he said.

“It was the moral thing to do,” he added. “I would never pick a job over my morals.”

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By the time Lopez got to the unidentified man in distress, several witnesses had already pulled him out of the water and that an off-duty nurse attended to the man until paramedics arrived. The man was treated in hospital but later released.

With files from Reuters