TECHNOLOGY
EYE IN THE SKY A
S I WALKED INTO the Sea Rescue Emergency Operations Centre (EOC), I saw that Marc De La Porte, the on-duty operator, was bent over the Strand camera monitor. ‘Everything okay?’ I asked him. He did not turn around. I could see he was panning the camera to the left of the area covered by the lifeguard flags. ‘We have a drowning in progress in front of St Tropez,’ he said. ‘Lifeguards are responding, and I have called out Station 9,’ he added, referring to our Gordon’s Bay Sea Rescue crew. The EOC emergency line started ringing, and Marc got up to answer it. I slipped into Marc’s empty chair and took control of the camera. Panning past the flags zone to St Tropez, I could see the Strand lifeguards launching their inshore rescue boat (IRB). It was 15h51 on Thursday 10 December 2020. FAR OUT When the camera was on the St Tropez zone, I zoomed in to look for a rip current, which is the biggest danger in this area. There was nothing. The lifeguards’ IRB appeared in the frame, and I saw it stop and pull a person out of the water. By then it was 15h52. The young woman rescued by the lifeguards was 17 years old. She was about 200m from the beach, and I wondered how on earth anyone had managed 16 |
SEA RESCUE AUTUMN 2021
to get so far out. And were there any other casualties? She was swiftly brought to the beach and I watched the IRB being turned around and launching through the surf again. Obviously there was at least one other casualty. As the lifeguards started to run their search patterns, I took the camera back in time. It is programmed automatically to look at eight different zones for 30 seconds at a time, recording all the while. This allows the camera operator to rewind
‘I ran the camera’s recording forward and watched the flash rip dissipating… I now understood what had happened.’
PHOTOGRAPHS: SUPPLIED
CCTV cameras are a new Sea Rescue initiative that uses powerful pan-tilt-zoom technology to monitor beach safety, help lifeguards to prevent drowning tragedies and assist rescue services during operations. Andrew Ingram tells us about the first camera that was used at Strand Beach in Cape Town.
