With the summer holidays upon us, please remember that if you are to spend time by the sea, take care to guard against being pulled out to sea by the tide.
Remember – never drift along in the sea on a lilo as this is one of the most common ways accidents happen. When accidents do happen we rely heavily on the lifeboats that cover our coastlines.
All our lifeboats are run and funded by the RNLI, which stands for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution. This organisation has 220 lifeboat stations around our coastlines and a fleet of more than 300 lifeboats. Some of the smaller ones, known as inshore lifeboats are launched more than 6,000 times each year and rescue around 6,000 people.
They cost more than £15,000 each and the larger all-weather boats around £1,500,000. All the money needed for the service to continue comes from contributions from the general public, including local schools, and the RNLI has more than 4,000 volunteer crew members.
Although the volunteers are highly skilled, they are prepared to put their own lives at risk to save others in difficulty. On average, more than 1,500 children are rescued by lifeboats each year. This is the equivalent to a class-full of children each week.
Did you know that drowning is the second most common form of fatal accident among British holidaymakers? Lifeboat crews are sometime called out to rescue people caught on mud flats which are difficult places to get to. Make sure you learn and remember what the beach flags mean. If a red flag is flying it means no swimming, so don’t even attempt to go into the water.
A red and yellow flag means that a lifeguard is on duty and that you should only swim between the red and yellow flags. A black and white chequered flag is for surfers only, so do not swim in this instance. So when you visit our beaches this summer, make sure you don’t give the lifeboats a reason for coming to the rescue.
There’s still a lot of fun to be had.
