DILEMMA FOR AUTHORITIES

IT’S known as D-bah and it is proving to be a deadly enigma.

As a group of mourning mates gathered on the sand yesterday to contemplate the life and tragic passing of a friend who simply wanted to go for a swim there on Christmas Day, the question remained hanging: how could eight young men be swept off their feet in relatively benign conditions, requiring a mass rescue? And why does it keep happening there? As Bulletin investigations continued yesterday, it emerged there had been a few instances in recent times of swimmers having to be plucked to safety by either boardriders or walkers who happened to be on the beach and saw them in difficulty.

It was also apparent that lifeguards have been warning of dangerous conditions there for bathers for some time.

One told the Bulletin that the seemingly calm conditions on Christmas Day were “silent but deadly’’.

In fact, D-bah is a beach for boardriders. It has developed an international reputation that has turned it into a rite of passage for visiting surfers, but it is puzzling that a group of international students – many or most of whom had limited swimming ability – would see it as the ideal spot to go for a swim when patrolled beaches are just a few hundred metres away on the other side of the headland.

Perhaps it was a matter of convenience. D-bah might have been within walking distance for the Tweed-based students, but so too are Rainbow Bay, Greenmount and Coolangatta beaches.

D-bah beach poses a dilemma for authorities.

Lifeguards can advise swimmers of the dangers on a stretch of beach, but do not have the powers that police have to issue directions to people who, if they ignore the order, can be charged.

On Christmas Day, lifeguards were already involved in a separate rescue on that beach when the group of men suddenly found themselves in trouble.

It seems the men slipped past the lifeguards without any chance of being warned, since the rescuers were already saving another swimmer.

Patrol flags are not used on that beach because it is already deemed dangerous.

An obvious solution therefore is to erect more prominent, multi-language warning signs. But if tourists and locals are ignoring these and are not heeding the message about swimming between the flags – and that was obvious yesterday as several people ignored the lessons of the tragedy the day before and splashed about in the water – there are few options left.

Lifeguards should be given strong powers to stop people entering the water or to order them out of the surf, but this could only apply in a declared precinct like a small beach such as D-bah, where it would be signposted as a beach for boardriding only.

The grim alternative is to erect signs warning of the dangers and advising that there is no lifeguard service and little prospect of rescue, other than by a sympathetic boardrider. Survival would be left to chance.

That is a tough love approach that few would find palatable.