Safety Tips
Introduction
Visiting Karekare beach can be an enjoyable adventure for all the family. There are bush walks, rocks to fish from and explore, waves to surf, swim and play on, sand dunes, a creek, waterfalls, historic places and more.
Of coures, along with all of this fun and adventure comes the potential for accidents and unwanted events. None of us want anyone's experience at Karekare to end in tears. We all want to be able to return time and again and enjoy all that this special place has to offer.
There are many rules and tips to help keep us safe at Karekare, these are outlined below. There is one rule in particular that you must remember if you really want to enjoy a safe time at the beach...always swim between the red and yellow lifeguard flags!
Read on to find out more about enjoying a safe visit to Karekare...
Where to swim
As stated above, the safest place to swim at Karekare is between the red and yellow lifeguard flags.
When the Lifeguards start patrol each day, one of the first things they do is check out the surf and locate the safest area for swimming. This means looking for a place where there are no rips, holes or other dangers.
Some days this is fairly easy and the flags can be placed on almost any part of the beach. Other days the surf is so dangerous that the flags can only be placed in one small area. Sometimes there might even be rips and/or holes right next to the flagged area, and the Lifeguards will know about these and keep a special eye on them.
Once the red and yellow patrol flags are set up, the Lifeguards position their rescue equipment close to this area. All the equipment, and the Lifeguards themselves, are positioned so that they can quickly get to anyone swimming within the flagged area.
What this means is that if we swim within the flagged area:
- we are swimming in the safest place on the beach;
- the Lifeguards and their equipment are close at hand;
- the Lifeguards are paying special attention to us.
In other words we are very likely to get into trouble and when we do help is far away.
So swim between the flags!
From time to time we might notice that the Lifeguards shift the flags along the beach. We might even be in the water swimming when this happens. The lifeguards are not doing this just to annoy us. What they are doing is keeping the flagged swimming area safe.
As the day goes on and the tide comes in and goes out, conditions change...sometimes quite a lot. What was once a safe area can become very unsafe within a short period of time.
To keep us safe the Lifeguards are always watching the conditions and adjusting the flagged area to keep it in the safest spot.
While swimming between the flags, we need to regularly look back to make sure we are still between them. Often we drift out of the flagged area, and sometimes the Lifeguards will shift the flags to a safer spot.