As South African’s prepare for the festive season, emergency personnel are urging holiday makers to take all the necessary precautions to ensure an incident free December. In a bid to ensure the safety beach goers the National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) is launching an emergency floatation campaign using Pink Torpedo buoys. The brightly coloured floatation devices are being placed at high risk zones along beaches, where rip currents are expected and in areas where no lifeguards are stationed.

The NSRI’s drowning prevention manager Andrew Ingram says that with every holiday season the NSRI faces the same concerns, the biggest being that people flood the beaches in large numbers and the consumption of alcohol. Concerns the NSRI is working to address.

“I think two most important things that we can do is to get people into safe spaces where they don’t drink and drive and they don’t drink and swim?”

He says that law enforcement confiscates thousands of litres of alcohol in an attempt to prevent people from drinking on beaches, adding that when people drink and swim, they are unable to adequately protect against drowning.

“Alcohol affects the way you move and think and we have so many people who drown because they are drinking alcohol.”

Ingram, therefore, urges beach goers to choose beaches on which life guards are stationed.

Given the fact that beach goers are faced by rip currents, Ingram says rip currents are dangerous because it pulls swimmers out to sea some 100-150 from the beach.

“When you are in one, it’s incredibly frightening, because you are being pulled away from the beach and your instinct is to turn and swim straight back to the beach.

“The waves come into the beach and they can’t get any higher into the beach, so [the waves] need to get out somehow and in some cases it forms a rip current.”

He advises anyone who finds themselves caught in a rip current to swim to the sides of the current in order for the waves assist in guiding the individual back to the shore.

Ingram says that while it is a natural reaction for parents or other rescuers to attempt to assist the drowning individual, he encourages individuals to instead throw the person, who is caught in a rip current, a Pink Torpedo buoys or any other floating device and to not enter the rip current themselves.

“Each Pink Torpedo Buoy sign also has a location number so that bystanders can tell Sea Rescue volunteers exactly where they are.”

Holiday makers are encouraged to visit the NSRI website for all necessary emergency contact numbers at nsri.org.za/emergency-numbers/

VOC 91.3fm