All at sea
Lifeguards are facing an unprecedented crisis with a shortage of funding and increasing demands. Now they are warning they may be forced to close our favourite summer beaches, writes Kelly Dennett.
As the sky turned black a yellow and red clad group dotting Muriwai's shore carefully began pulling the drowned up to where the tide couldn't swallow them. The dead had lain for hours. Police and coastguard circled in daylight, but eventually the whirr of helicopters stopped. By nightfall, still on their own, the lifeguards wondered what to do.
“We were thinking, we can't leave these bodies,” longtime Muriwai volunteer lifeguard service committee member and past president Tim Jago says. “The helicopters had gone home and there were no police on the beach. By this time there was a trail of debris spilled all down the beach.”
In November last year fishing vessel The Francie went down in treacherous conditions on the Kaipara Harbour. Eight men died.
It was the worst marine disaster in recent times.
Forty-five minutes from Auckland's centre, Muriwai, with its unforgiving surf and precipitous coastline, became the unexpected scene of efforts to find survivors.
By chance, the lifesaving crew at Muriwai that weekend was bigger than usual, thanks to a training session. Rather than choosing between patrolling the flags or helping with the rescue the group was able to do both. Volunteers scoured the beach, two went out in an inflatable rescue boat.
“The Francie situation was one of a kind,” Jago says.
The tide, he says, defied logic. Typically north-flowing, on this day everything travelled south.
Bits of Francie washed up. A porcelain toilet was discovered, and four bodies.
“We were finding bodies and debris well away from where the search zone was supposed to be.
“The police were gearing up for a rescue and body retrieval mission in the Kaipara Harbour itself. This was outside the harbour, up along the coast,” Jago says.
“They were in one spot. We were in another. We just happened to have the bodies at our feet, if we can put it that way.”
For a long time, nobody came. High tide trapped the vehicles, now with the bodies on board, and to evacuate them the Defence Force opened up its land for access.
“(Volunteers) were there well after midnight, essentially sitting there with bodies, waiting,” Jago says.
“That's played on the minds of a couple (of people), I can tell you. A couple guys my age are saying, ‘I did not sign up for that'.”
AFTER THE Francie tragedy “there was a blame game going on,” Jago admits.
“A couple of guys were angry they were left up the beach in the darkness with the bodies, and the authorities who probably should have been there running the show, weren't there.”
The irony of the volunteers waiting for emergency services to arrive, was that Surf Life Saving Northern Region (SLSNR) has become the emergency service, its members and chief say.
SLSNR covers the busiest beaches in New Zealand, comprising 17 clubs stretching across 24 patrol locations from Raglan in the Waikato, to remote spots in the Far North.
SLSNR chief executive Matt Williams is calling for a public discussion about what communities expect from lifeguarding services, and a subsequent review of its funding structure. Ideally, central Government would intervene and throw its support behind surf lifesaving just as it did with Fire and Emergency, Williams says.
This year, then-Internal Affairs Minister Peter Dunne announced that local government would no longer fund the cost of rural fire services and the newly unified Fire and Emergency would draw funding from insurance levies and Government contributions for non-fire-related rescues.
Dunne said the change was necessary to bring the fire service into the 21st century.
It's that modern thinking that Williams says needs to be addressed in surf lifesaving. Population growth, urban sprawl, heightened mobility and changing technology is all having an impact on the charity, he says.
SLSNR has 1500 volunteer lifeguards, who clocked more than 60,000 volunteer hours last season between Labour weekend in October, and Easter.
It's not a 9-to-5 operation: Lifeguards are on call long after official patrol has finished- most drownings happen outside those hours — and are available for rescue response year-round.
Williams says lifeguard roles have widened and beaches are busier than ever, but their funding isn't matching their output.
Without a sustainable funding model, alternatives could be significant. Measures like shortening the lifeguard season, cutting patrols, not participating in rescues — like the Francie disaster — and even closing dangerous beaches have to be considered, Williams says.
“I think we're going to get to the stage where the funding we receive is no longer adequate to deliver the current services which means we'll start to move backwards. We will have to ask, where will we not be?” he says.
“It's hard to have the conversation . . . (but) we want to be having as much impact as we should.
“There's going to be more drownings than there needs to be if we're not out there.”
INA country where our busiest and best beaches are in remote, craggy ranges kilometres from hospitals and adequate cellphone reception; where the shore is home not just to swimmers and surfers, but paragliders, horse riders, quad bikers and walkers, the service's volunteers say its role has moved on from the good old days of just watching the beach with a reel and line at the ready.
Now Williams says there is an expectation lifeguards will lend their expertise to land rescues, and perform first aid in non-water related incidents, in addition to their education and prevention work in the community.
“We've spent 80 years growing lifeguard services but also, at the same time, the community continues to ask more from them. There's a tacit expectation that they're the guys you call.”
Surf lifesavers are busier than ever. Figures from SLSNR's annual reports show that last summer 292 people were rescued- 152 per cent higher than their five-year average — 461 people received assistance on or near the beach, and there were 881 first aid jobs.
In July, concerns were raised after Tourism New Zealand launched a campaign encouraging tourists to visit in off-peak times of the year. The tourism industry also puts a strain on the country's beaches, SLSNR says, particularly with many tourists being unable to swim.
Figures showed there had been a 61 per cent increase in visitors to popular Coromandel beauty spot