Maritime Madness at Exmouth as Near-Fatality reminds Uni Students of Coastal Safety
Anna Kane, Online News Editor, interviews a student’s eye-witness account of an Exmouth near-death experience.
Students making the most of the summer heat wave must keep their wits about them as a young man nearly drowned at a popular student beach last month.
On June 1st, the man visited Exmouth Beach with friends who jokingly buried him in the sand. The group didn’t consider the changing tide which came in with the man still buried. The Police, HMS Coastguard, RNLI, and ambulance service were called to the scene.
Exeter student Zak Connolly (21) was an eyewitness to the near tragedy. “We were tanning maybe 25 feet away from where this was all happening, then we saw a crowd start to emerge”, he said, “there were people digging… it looked like they were having fun”.
He quickly discovered the gravity of the situation: “the tide started coming in quite fast and we quickly realised that it wasn’t fun and games, something really quite worrying was going on”.
…we quickly realised that it wasn’t fun and games, something really quite worrying was going on.
Zak Connolly
He described how scary it was: “the guy was begging for his life, asking for emergency services to be called…you could hear him kind of choking on the water”. He added how the man was provided a snorkel but seemed likely to drown.
Zak and his friends left the scene after the arrival of emergency services. They went their separate ways “checking the news periodically”, relieved when they saw the man had survived.
“It was a very sombre reminder to be careful when you’re by the sea” Zak concluded. Students should bear this sentiment in mind over summer to avoid a watery grave.
