Teenagers have rescued seven people from drowning in two separate incidents on the NSW South Coast.
Key points:
- A family of four and two teenage girls were saved by teens on boogie boards Saturday evening
- A young man was saved by another group of teenagers in a separate incident nearby days earlier
- The teenagers used skills learned at nippers and life saving club training
On Saturday, six friends aged between 12 and 15 were out playing on their boogie boards at Kiama Beach after life saving patrol hours when they noticed several people in distress.
Max Laird, Braith Davidson, George Griffin, Harrison Smee, Alex Norris, and Zach Marsden are all members of the Kiama Surf Life Saving Club and said they were alerted to the danger when they heard screaming.
“My first thought was this can’t be happening,” said 12-year-old George Griffin.
“It was 20 minutes after the lifeguards had packed up and we were just boogie boarding, so all six of us went over.”
Fifteen-year-old Harrison Smee was the oldest in the group and said two teenage girls, and a mother and her three children, had been caught in a flash rip that formed unexpectedly in the middle of the beach.
“They were having fun near the shore one minute and next minute you hear them screaming, taken out by the rip. It was instant,” he said.
“The kids were out there on their boogie boards and got sucked out, and the mum saw them distressed so she went out herself.”
George said the family was in real danger by the time they arrived.
“I got to an 8, 9-year-old kid called Matt, and by the time I got to him he was completely under water, just his hand above the surface of the water, so I was pretty worried,” he said.
“It was shocking, but we just had to do what we could.”
Half the boys were undertaking their Bronze Medallion Course, and the others their Life Saving Certificate, this weekend, and said they used their skills learnt at nippers to safely bring everyone to shore.
“I felt scared at first but once we realised that we’ve trained and we’ve done versions of this before, pretending it’s going to happen, we used our skills and they’re all okay now,” George said.
“In that moment it was what we had to do. It came [to us] that quickly. It was good,” Harrison said.
President of the Kiama SLSC Phil Perry said the boys reacted bravely in unpredictable conditions.
“They put themselves on the line. You don’t expect a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old to do that, but their training just kicked in and they performed admirably, so we’re so proud of them,” he said.
Separate save up the road
Meanwhile on Thursday evening, about five kilometres north of Saturday’s rescue, high school friends Lucas Mak, George Kalajzich, and Dax Cairncross successfully rescued a distressed tourist at Jones Beach.
The students stripped off their clothes and used a surfboard to reach a young male swimmer caught in a rip during unpatrolled hours.
“We met the guy out in the rip and started paddling back to the shore slowly. He couldn’t really walk so his mates picked him up,” Lucas said.
SLSC’s Phil Perry said the rescues were testament to the importance of life saving training for kids from an early age, and beach safety training for the general public.
“If there was not many people on the beach it could have gone another way very quickly,” he said.
“The message from our club is if you live near a beach and you want to be at the beach a lot, you should come to a session.”
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