Hundreds Owe Thanks to Lifesavers.

A few days ago a tragic event occurred on the Gold Coast, a 14 year old surf lifesaver drowned during the Australian Surf Life Saving Championships at Kurrawa Beach.

While this is an incredibly rare incident, it has gained a lot of media coverage and will no doubt cast a certain amount of fear and sadness into the minds of parents and children who may be considering, or already undertaking, surf lifesaving activities.

When I originally found the following article in the Weekend West, I recognised it as PR but didn't initially link it to the incident on the Gold Coast. Upon further inspection however, I believe that this article has been pitched to the newspaper from the Surf Lifesaving PR team to help control the possible fallout of the incident and reinforce the positive work that the association undertakes.

The article is titled "Hundreds Owe Thanks to Lifesavers" and features a varied group of surf lifesavers smiling at the beach.

The article then goes on to reveal that 2,500 people were rescued in WA this summer, twice as many as the previous year.

The one fatality that occurred over the summer was mentioned, but quickly put down to the fact that the swimmer "flouted" the rules and didn't swim between the flags.

"Surf Life Saving WA manager Chris Peck said the death was tragic, but preventable".

The lifesavers also performed about 10 life-saving resuscitation over the summer with many other close calls.

Then a story about a 5 year old who was saved with some quotes from his mother speaking highly of the surf lifesavers.

The article ends with the statistic that the lifesavers performed 24,174 preventive actions (inc closing beaches and warning swimmers) this season, up from 16,900 last year.

The PR team was really on the ball, as the drowning only occurred on the Wednesday and by Saturday this article was in the paper. It's likely that other major newspapers around the country had similar articles in them also.

These guys really do an amazing job at taking care of swimmers, the tragedy was incredibly unfortunate and the young life lost wont soon be forgotten.

Annette