Disaster Averted at Surin Beach - Belgian Family Rescued. Surin-Bangtao Lifeguards Sayan Bureerak, Hrib Soison, Daren Jenner, Moose Nakorn and Takwa Amatory participated in the rescue. There hasn’t been a drowning death on Phuket’s Surin Beach in five years. Despite multiple drownings at nearby beaches such as Layan, Patong, Karon, and Kata over that same time frame, Surin has remained free of fatalities. During that time, all of Surin’s beachgoers left the water and have returned to their families on shore. Os course, there have been some close calls, as recently as last year. (phuketgazette.net/phuket-news/Singaporean-tourists-saved-at-Phuket-s-Surin-Beach/21445#ad-image-0) That record came very close to being shattered yesterday. The tragedy that might have ensued had the potential to become one of Phuket’s worst drowning tragedies in recent times. A family of three from Belgium, including their three year old son, along with a fourth victim, could have all lost their lives yesterday in a space of a few minutes. Despite average looking surf and sunny conditions, all four were caught in a flash rip current. They had ventured into the ocean in the worst possible spot, passing a steady row of red warning flags and multi-lingual signs, all indicating no swimming and dangerous rip currents were present in the area. Just a three minute walk down the beach, large red and yellow flags set up by Lifeguards marked off the safe swimming area, which beachgoers had been using for hours without incident. At 4:30 PM, the four were spotted by lifeguards well outside of the safe swimming area, just north of elephant rock (in the middle of Surin) struggling to swim to shore against the current, yet only moving farther out to sea. One man was trying to hold a small baby while fighting the fast moving water. With the child’s mother being swept the farthest out, onlookers watched as three Lifeguards dove into the ocean towards the victims and began the process of securing them and assisting them back to shore, as three other rescuers responded to the shore for back-up. The Lifeguard assisting the man and baby was whistling nearby swimmers out of the water, even as he tended to the two in distress. Lifeguards and victims were pounded by the surf and dragged by the current for nearly five minutes as they pulled the victims out of the rip current and back to shore. All returned to the beach safely without any serious injury. Recently, monsoon storms have ravaged the coastline, destroying the Lifeguard tower at Surin and washing away a portion of the road that runs the length of the beach. Temporary guard quarters have been brought in, but the height of the old tower provided a much better view and platform to launch rescues from. There is a dire need for a proper tower and headquarters, say Lifeguards. The current temporary structure sits at ground level, not nearly high enough for unobstructed views of the entire beach. In addition, Surin’s full time Lifeguard staff has been cut from eight guards last year, to just five in 2014. (The sixth rescuing Lifeguard was a volunteer). “During the rescue, if another victim needed assistance at the south rocks, we just wouldn’t have been able to get there in time”, one of the rescuers said. “We are stretched fairly thin.” “Everyone will make it home safely from Surin today, so no matter how difficult the rescue was, it was definitely a good day in the end,” Lifeguards said as the family came by to say thank you.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 07:27:57 +0000