'It could save someone's life': At least four life buoys a week thrown into River Lee

A Cork City Missing Persons Search and Rescue (CCMPSAR) volunteer has said they are recovering up to four life buoys a week that have been thrown into the River Lee.

David Varian said: “For some reason, when people are heading into town or back from town, they want to throw them in. It’s just stupidity, really. We carry out sweeps on our search boats, and we do a bit of training midweek and at weekends, and we find them and hand them back to council.

“At the moment, we have three in the base that we recovered at the weekend. They’re thrown into the water for no reason other than being thrown in.”

Rescuers have, thankfully, never tried to use a life buoy and found there to be none available, saying: “We’ve never come across that situation. They’re very rapidly replaced by Cork City Council. When we find them, they’re sanitised and reused. It’s the council’s job to have them there, and they’re very good at it.”

Mr Varian explained that as well as search and rescue, and retrieving life buoys, CCMPSAR are very active in the community: “We’re busy all the time. We do a lot in the community with safety boats for things like the Lee Swim, Ocean to City.

People should be taught the purpose and value of life rings, Mr Varian said: “People just seem to be uneducated as to what they’re for; they see them at the side of the river and say they’ll just throw it in.

“It might be good for secondary schools to be taught about this. There’s a lot of awareness around water safety, but it might be good to teach them that this is a life-saving apparatus.

“It’s like a defibrillator, which saves someone’s life if they go into cardiac arrest; a life ring saves somebody’s life if they get into difficulty in the water.”

He appealed to people: “A life ring is a lifesaver.

“A stolen life ring could be a lost life, and it could be somebody you know, so think before you act, because, at the end of the day, they’re there to save people.”