River patrol to monitor drowning danger spots

Waterway patrols in the city – aimed at reducing the numbers of people losing their lives due to drowning incidents – could be up and running by the end of the summer.

Galway Waterways Patrol (GWP) will be officially launched next week in the city with the support of the emergency services in an effort to tackle the scourge of late night drownings, the majority of them involving young people.

Arthur Carr, Founder of GWP, told the Galway City Tribune that the success of similar initiatives in places like Wexford, Cork, Limerick and the Foyle in Northern Ireland, had been ‘truly remarkable’.

“In Limerick alone, over the past three years, the Corbett Suicide Patrol, have been involved in 300 incidents where people have been successfully taken from the water.

“The situation in Galway city is unique. In places like Limerick, Wexford and Derry, there is just the one river, but here in Galway there is a whole network of rivers and canals right in the heart of the city,” he said.

GWP will be officially launched at the Radisson Blu Hotel in the city on next Thursday night, August 6, at 6.30pm, with an appeal being made for volunteers to turn up and listen to an outline of proposals.

In the city set-up, the concentration of activity for GWP will be in having observers strategically located at known ‘danger spots’ for drowning, especially during the early hours of the morning.

For more on this story, see this week’s Galway City Tribune