This article is from page 12 of the 2007-08-28 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
SIX people who were thrown into the water after their boat capsized were struggling to reach safety in full view of a large crowd for 20 minutes before anyone rang the coastguard.
It emerged that people standing on the bridge and by the riverside in Kil-
laloe on Sunday evening, watching the hapless boaters struggle to get to dry land, all wrongly presumed that someone else had rung the emergen- cy Services.
“It was almost 20 minutes after the incident before the call came in that there were people in trouble in the water and then it was from someone who knows people in the service,” a
spokesman for the Killaloe Coast- guard service said.
“We are asking people to ring 999, even if they think it has been called in before.”
The coastguard boat was called out after a small boat turned over, throw- ing the six men into the water.
Four — including one man who was not wearing a lifeyjacket — man-
aged to get out but only after they were swept almost 300 yards along the river.
The coastguards were on the scene minutes after getting the call and picked the remaining pair from the We ho
“The turbines were turned on at Ardnacrusha, creating a 15-knot cur- rent.
“If that grabs you, you just get dragged away,’ a member of the res- cue team said.
All six had been aboard a hire cruiser moored at Molly’s on the Ballina side.
The accident happened at the bridge at Killaloe after they went on the wa- ter in a smaller boat which comes with the hire cruiser.