Keep eyes on kids in the water

Paramedics are urging people to keep a watchful eye on children around water after a series of traumatic near drownings on the Gold Coast.

Queensland Ambulance Service (QAS) personnel have responded to 29 near drowning incidents on the Gold Coast since the start of summer, including 11 in 2024, making the region the busiest in the state.

QAS Senior Operations Supervisor John Nolan said many of the incidents involved young children, with paramedics arriving to find highly emotional scenes.

“They’re very traumatic (scenes). There’s a lot of chaos generally. There’s a lot of emotion there,” he said.

“So we respond with a large number of resources to those incidents.”

Mr Nolan said beaches and backyard pools were the most common locations for near drowning incidents.

He appealed for adults in charge of supervising young children to ensure there were eyes on them at all times around water, warning that drowning was a “silent killer”.

“Supervision is the key for young ones. Making sure that someone is watching the children and there is good communication about who is supervising,” Mr Nolan said.

“Making sure the children are visualised, because drowning is a silent killer, there is no noise, and with no noise a tragedy could unfold.”

Among the incidents on the Gold Coast over summer were:

• A one-year-old who died after being pulled from a pool at an Elanora unit complex on December 23.

• A toddler rushed to hospital after a near drowning incident at the Big4 Holiday Park in Helensvale on Wednesday.

Surf Life Saving Queensland said it performed 91 rescues over the weekend, 19 of them on Gold Coast beaches.