LESSONS FROM PIHA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 44, 22 February 1937, Page 6

LESSONS FROM PIHA.

It is probable that several people in Auckland to-day owe their lives to the surf life-saving teams which went to Piha yesterday to give a ''demonstration." They gave an extremely practical one, in circumstances from which several lessons should be relearned. The .first is that bathers accustomed to the safe beaches of the east coast are seldom careful enough when they enter the surf on the .west coast. The second is that some bathers, either over-confident of their own powers or reckless of the warnings of experience, will, unless restrained, bathe in dangerous places, risking their own lives andi the lives of others. The third, and most important, is that i(. is utterly unfair that the life-savers, who voluntarily patrol the beaches, should have no legal powers to prevent bathers from swimming into places I from which they may have to be rescued. Accidents will happen, but many of them can and should be averted. The life-saving clubs train and equip themselves, (with but meagre help from the public) to meet the emergency which is ever-imminent on a popular beach. Some of the emergencies can be (and are' frequently) foreseen, and the life-savers should have power to take action to avert them.