Brave surfers avert drowning tragedy
Visit to popular beach almost ends in disaster
ALAID-BACK Human Rights Day at the beach turned into a heroic rescue mission when five surfers saved a group of children, a volunteer and a staff member from a Komga children’s home from drowning at Glen Eden beach.
Five children and the volunteer were sucked out by a powerful rip current. They were pulled ashore by two surfers, who then still paddled out to beyond the Glengariff point where Wonga China Steven, 27, was on the verge of going under.
They were joined by three other surfers and together they surrounded the panicking Steven, assisting him to the safety of the rocks.
The youth and childcare worker was treated overnight at Life Beacon Bay Hospital and discharged yesterday morning.
The children, volunteer worker and Steven were enjoying a day on the beach from the Open Arms Children’s Home.
Glengariff resident Luke Roberts, 19, said he was coming in after a surf on Tuesday afternoon when he heard children screaming.
“They were being sucked out. I got off my board so they could get on, but they were too stressed and just clung onto me. While I was rescuing them I noticed a man being sucked out to beyond the point so I paddled straight out there.”
Meanwhile surfer Tyrone Pascoe, 39, who was on the beach with his wife, heard more children shouting and plunged into the ocean to help them.
“There were two girls and a boy and they were drowning each other trying to stay afloat. They were terrified, but I got them to the rocks where they could stand.”
Roberts was the first to reach Steven, who had been pulled by the rip while trying to help his charges onto a boogie board, which he had let go of. “I told him to grab my board, but he looked like a dead man and could not understand.”
Within seconds, four more surfers – Pascoe, Wayne Monk, Andrew Gardner and Tagan Smith – joined the rescue. “I was surfing in the bay and saw people on the beach waving and then I saw someone being sucked out by the rip right off the point,” said Springbok surfer Monk.
Because the drowning man was too exhausted to haul himself onto a surfboard, his rescuers suspended him between two boards.
“We carried him in a blanket stretcher-style to a grass patch so he could be taken to hospital.”
Open Arms Children’s Home director Stuart Ralph said the children were back at school yesterday and expressed his gratitude to the surfers. “They were prepared to risk their own safety to help others.”
Monk said surfers frequently performed rescues there.
He asked anyone who could sponsor a lifesaving kit to e-mail him at
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