PINK BUOYS
MIRACLE MONDAY
in Oyster Bay S
ITTING DOWN AT HIS desk in his home office, Lodewyk van Rensburg, Statcom of Station 36 (Oyster Bay), was not having the Monday he’d planned. Seeing as his meetings at Tsitsikamma and Kromme River had both been postponed, he figured he might as well catch up on some admin. Lodewyk started reviewing the correspondence on the proposed site for the new Sea Rescue base. He knew the site well, but the other decision makers didn’t. And so he decided he’d drive to the property to take some photographs so that the others could see the terrain. As he was getting into his personal bakkie, the thought crossed his mind to take the Sea Rescue vehicle instead. If it wasn’t driven every four to five days, the battery would go flat, and this was Sea Rescue business after all, so he went back inside and swopped keys before heading out. On his way to the site, Lodewyk’s phone beeped with a WhatsApp message. Gerlinde Kerling, one of the local coast watchers, had messaged him to report that some children on the beach were playing with the pink rescue buoy. Immediately alarm bells 12 |
SEA RESCUE AUTUMN 2020
went off in Lodewyk’s head. He knew Sea Rescue worked closely with the local community and had run extensive workshops on water safety and the purpose of the pink buoy. It hadn’t been touched in the 18 months since it had been installed. The children wouldn’t simply play with the pink buoy – something was definitely up! By this time he was 400m from the beach, and he diverted straight onto the dunes. As Lodewyk reached the beach, he spotted a young local, Ricardo Kettledas, emerging from the waves carrying a teenager, and drove straight towards them. Lodewyk wasted no time in getting out of the vehicle and assessing the casualty. He was unconscious but breathing on his own, with a regular pulse. While Lodewyk was doing the assessment, he was told that a second teenager had gone under the water. Confident that the first teenager would be okay, he placed him on his side in the recovery position and asked the children to stay with him. Lodewyk was certain of two things: he needed to find the second teenager in the water fast, and he needed
the back-up of his Sea Rescue crew. He activated an urgent callout, telling everyone to come to the beach as quickly as possible. While sending out the message, Lodewyk scanned the beach, looking for the rip current. Discarding his shirt and shoes, he ran into the water. Ricardo followed Lodewyk back in, taking along the pink rescue buoy, and waited in a slightly shallower area on a sandbank just out of the current. Thanks to good visibility, Lodewyk spotted the child in about 3 metres of water, about 1 metre from the bottom, being pulled out to sea. Wasting no time, he dived down to retrieve him before swimming him back to the sandbar, where Ricardo was waiting with the buoy. The child was pale, had no pulse and wasn’t breathing. Using the buoy for support, Lodewyk and Ricardo swam him back to the beach together. As soon as it was shallow enough, Lodewyk started CPR. The other children ran down to meet them and helped carry the child up onto dry sand. Lodewyk continued with CPR. He tasked some of the kids
PHOTOGRAPHS: SUPPLIED
Being in the right place at the right time made all the difference in the rescue of two youngsters from a deadly rip. That, and a pink buoy. By Cherelle Leong
