Trying week for local lifeguards

ON what has been a tragic week in Clare waters, with 77-year-old Limerick man John Looby drowning in Kilkee on Sunday evening, Clare County Council Water Safety Officer Liam Griffin said there were a record number of rescues in Spanish Point on Monday.
While he declined to disclose the exact number of rescues, The Clare Champion understands the figure was in the region of 25.

Mr Griffin was highly critical of the behaviour of some swimmers, whom he says completely ignored advice from the three lifeguards on duty in Spanish Point. 

“It’s a combination of Willie Clancy, the warm weather, the schools being closed and a huge amount of holidaymakers in the area. It’s very frustrating. If everybody did what they were told at the beach it would be difficult enough, but people are absolutely doing their own thing, disregarding any advice and are not respecting the flags that we have on our beaches,” Mr Griffin told The Clare Champion on Wednesday. 

“Sea conditions were such that there was a rip current. People were swimming out, getting caught in the rip current and they had to be brought in. A lifeguard had to go out and rescue them because they couldn’t get in themselves. There was a record number of rescues,” he added.

He said swimmers have to take some responsibility for their own safety. “You’re relying on people to stay within the swim zone. The lifeguards put down two flags on the beach every morning and you’re supposed to stay within the flags but that doesn’t happen. That makes the job so much more difficult. For example, Kilkee is one of our safer beaches but it’s a 20 minute walk from the lifeguards hut over to the pier. It’s impossible to adequately monitor that stretch so what you’re hoping is that as many people as possible will stay within the swim zone but that doesn’t happen,” he said.

A man was also rescued in Mountshannon on Tuesday.

“He thought he was jumping into waist high water. He wasn’t and he went down. When the lifeguard went to assist him, she threw out the can buoy to him but he couldn’t take it. She had to go in and bring him out,” the Water Safety Officer explained.

Another source of frustration to Mr Griffin and the lifeguards working under his direction is the fact that they spend much of their time looking for lost children, who are not in the water.

“That’s an absolute bugbear of ours. It’s really not our responsibility but we do help out. If there’s a lifeguard around the beach, the promenade or a carpark looking for a child, that’s one pair of eyes less on the water,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, Manuel Di Lucia Junior from Kilkee was one of the first people on the scene at the tragic drowning incident on the local beach on Sunday evening.

“We were sitting on the beach. I had been over at the pier. I came over to where my wife, Estelle and family were sitting between the Strand Hotel and the Thomond. My wife’s cousin shouted that there was someone in trouble in the water. So I ran down to the water edge. The lifeguard was just on the scene. I helped her to turn him over and pull him out. When I saw him I said to myself that he had been in the water for a while,” he explained on Wednesday.

The lifeguards asked him to seek additional help, which he did. “I went off. My wife, her cousin and the lifeguard helped to pull him out of the water. The lifeguard started CPR on him with another lifeguard. By the time I got back they had a full session of CPR done on him. Between the paramedics, ourselves and the lifeguards we probably worked on him for nearly an hour,” the Kilkee man added.

Mr Di Lucia said work to revive Mr Looby continued all the way to the waiting helicopter. “We got him on the stretcher and we continued with the CPR all the way up the steps and in the ambulance. They were giving him the defibrillator and brought him to Kilkee GAA pitch where he was airlifted to Limerick,” he said.
Mr Looby is survived by his wife, Joan and five children.