Coastguard: unicorn craze a horn in our side
Emergency services blast trendy beach toys after 15 people on flamingoes and swans are plucked from sea
THEY are the summer’s most-wanted holiday accessory, popping up everywhere from tropical islands to the great British seaside.
But giant inflatable unicorns are proving less popular with coastguards after a woman was blown out to sea and had to be rescued from one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.
She was one of 15 people rescued along the south coast by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in just one evening after their inflatables veered off course. A pink flamingo and a swan were also involved. Instagram is filled with thousands of #inflatableunicorn pictures from foreign climes, while the England football team were photographed racing them in their hotel pool ahead of their game against Panama.
The flamingo is even more popular on social media, while retailers are also selling giant watermelon slices, lobsters, cacti, pineapples and ice lollies. Retailers say they have seen a sales hike thanks to Love Island, where inflatables can be glimpsed floating in the villa’s swimming pool.
Now the Coastguard Agency has issued a warning about the toys, urging people not to take them into the sea.
HM Coastguard duty controller Piers Stanbury said: “We’ve had people rescued from a number of beaches along the Hampshire and Sussex coastline. Each one of them had been using an inflatable. Thankfully, everyone so far has been rescued and is safe. We can’t stress enough that these inflatables are not suitable for use in the sea. Tide conditions, the wind, any changes in the weather can just take them out beyond safe depths. Please, don’t use them. Don’t take them to the seaside. Inflatables should only be used in swim- ming pools, not at the coast where they can quickly go from being fun to being potentially deadly.”
In the unicorn incident, a helicopter was scrambled when the woman drifted into the Solent, a shipping lane used by passenger, freight and military vessels. Hillhead Coastguard Rescue Team, based between Portsmouth Harbour and the River Itchen, wrote on Twitter: “Tasked to a person blown over 400m from shore into one of the busiest waterways in the world on an inflatable unicorn. Luckily, a passing kayaker assisted until Gosport ILB [a patrol craft] recovered the casualty safely to shore.” A team from Hayling Island Lifeboat Station, Hants, was called to another unicorn, only to pass a flamingo on the way and then spot a person who had drifted out to sea in a dinghy and was clinging to a buoy. Three lifeboats and a helicopter searched the bay, fearing that someone had fallen from the flamingo. They were stood down before sunset. Coastguard officials said rescue teams were wasting valuable hours checking abandoned inflatables. “Some of the inflatables were collected by our teams, some will have made their way over to France,” a spokesman said.
At John Lewis, the hot weather has seen a rush of sales for deluxe inflatables in the shape of gold-winged unicorns, flamingoes and a tropical island complete with palm tree.
The store’s top seller is the £65 rideon unicorn, while sales of the lie-on watermelon have risen 172 per cent in the past week. Lisa Rutherford, seasonal buyer at John Lewis, said: “Giant pool inflatables are hot property. Since Love Island hit the UK’S screens, we have seen sales soar.”
Iwas a student in the summer of 1976 and spent the vacation working on a farm in Yorkshire. We were picked up by a bus at 6am every day under skies of cerulean blue. For week after week, the sun shone and the temperature soared. The memories of that glorious summer have entered national folklore, but there was another side to it that it is easy to forget: drought. It was the driest 15-month period for more than 300 years. The previous summer had been unusually dry, as had the winter. As the temperatures rose throughout July and August without a cloud in the sky, it was clear a crisis was at hand.
The Government responded with emergency legislation allowing restrictions on water usage. Mains supplies to thousands of homes were turned off and stand-pumps appeared in the streets where householders queued with buckets and containers. Rivers and reservoirs dried up; wildlife wilted (apart from ladybirds, which appeared in their millions); the Oval Test against the West Indies was played on a pitch with hardly a blade of grass to be seen.
Complacently, we assume that water will always be plentiful; and it is true that shortages do not last long. The 2010-12 drought was followed by the wettest April-to-september period ever, with widespread flooding. The 1976 dry spell ended spectacularly when the Labour government appointed Dennis Howell to be Minister for Drought, at which point the heavens opened.
The month that has just ended was even drier than June 1976, but so far there is no threat of a similar drought. The aquifers and reservoirs were replenished by abundant winter rains and the water companies say there are no immediate worries. But the warning signs are there.
The first hosepipe ban has been imposed in Northern Ireland, of all places – an area not exactly short of rainfall and with the UK’S biggest lake slap in the middle of the province. United Utilities, which supplies water to north-west England, is also considering a formal hosepipe ban. Elsewhere, consumers are being urged to reduce their use of water by letting the garden succumb and taking showers rather than baths. Looking at the long-range forecast, the weather pattern looks eerily like 1976. Another month of this and we could have a serious problem.
For a country with a worldwide reputation for having a dull and wet climate, some areas are in fact remarkably dry. London and the Home Counties have about the same average annual rainfall as Jerusalem – about 23 inches – though it tends to be more evenly spread. Since our maritime climate ensures that other parts of the UK have copious amounts of rain, there is an obvious solution, which is to move water from the places that have it to drier, more populous areas that need it.
After suggesting this in passing last week, a reader reminded me that just such a scheme was drawn up in 1942 by JF Pownall. His Grand Contour Canal would follow the spine of England, around the 300ft level that connects several of the most populated areas, and serve as a water grid capable of distributing domestic water supply around England as need arises.
As the population grows, the risk to water supplies is apparent. In 1976, the population of the UK was 56million; the latest figures showed it has grown to 66million, and the pace of increase is speeding up. London and the South East, which have the least rainfall, have seen the fastest population growth. There are two solutions: we can increase supply or reduce demand.
The first could be achieved by way of Pownall’s grid, by reducing leakages or by water desalination. Thames Water opened its first plant in 2010 at Beckton, East London, to treat water from the brackish waters of the Thames and provide up to 150million litres of drinking water each day to 400,000 households. More of these plants will be required. A report from the Institution of Chemical Engineers proposed that at least four major desalination plants should be built on coastlines and estuaries by 2050; but none is planned.
Cutting demand would need a far greater uptake of water meters. Supply companies now have the power to insist on metering as a way of managing resources in so-called stress areas; but as with smart energy meters there is consumer resistance. Potential water shortages are rarely mentioned in the debate around immigration, which usually focuses on getting overseas workers for the NHS or to work in fruit fields. The big question, though, is whether our public infrastructure can cope with the size of the population.
A classic example is London’s sewage system. Bazalgette’s engineering marvel was constructed for a city of three million people. It is now eight million and the drains are overwhelmed. The new super-sewer, officially known as the Thames Tideway Tunnel, won’t be completed until 2023, which cannot come soon enough for those who row on the river after the overflow gates have been opened.
Campaigners arguing for untrammelled immigration or who object to controls need to say how the infrastructure can deal with it. Is anyone surprised there are too few homes for people to live in when the population is eight million higher than Government actuaries thought it would be just 25 years ago? Why do people think the NHS is under an impossible strain or the trains are overcrowded? Labour would have you believe it is all to do with Tory privatisation or austerity but the real reason is the additional demand caused by more people.
The world over, water is a resource under strain as a result of population growth and climate change. Indeed, the geopolitics of water are greater than they are for oil. Wars have been fought over supplies and will be in future. Some major cities have come close to running out, as Cape Town did earlier this year until the citizens were required to cut down dramatically on water use before the rains arrived to break a lengthy dry spell. Periodic droughts in Sub-saharan Africa cause famines and could trigger mass migrations, with Europe the likely destination. At that point, the water we will be most grateful for is the 22 miles between us and the continent.