Cape Town - A ten-year-old girl and a man drowned in separate incidents on New Year’s Day.
The National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI) has confirmed that two people – a girl, 10, and a man in his fifties – drowned at Strand Beach and Sea Point respectively on Saturday.
NSRI Gordon’s Bay station commander Alan Meiklejohn said they received a call at 7.25am from Strand Beach, where a 10-year-old girl was reported missing in the surf zone.
“On arrival at the scene, our sea-rescue craft with NSRI members on board searched in the direction of the sea currents when a resident in a block of flats opposite Strand Beach reported sighting the girl in the water a distance away from where she had originally been swimming,” Meiklejohn said.
“They pulled her on to the sea-rescue craft and brought her to paramedics on the shore, where she was declared deceased,” Meiklejohn said.
Strand police have opened an inquest docket into the drowning incident. According to their reports, the girl was swimming with her two siblings when she got into difficulty in the water and disappeared beneath the waves.
NSRI Table Bay station commander Marc de Vos said at 9.40am they responded to witness reports of a local man appearing to be in difficulty in a natural tidal pool along the Sea Point promenade.
“An NSRI rescue swimmer pulled the man on to the rocks, where paramedics certified that he was deceased,” De Vos said in a statement.
Police spokesperson FC van Wyk said an inquest docket was opened by the Sea Point police.
“According to reports, an unknown male was found floating in a natural tidal pool opposite a block of flats in Sea Point, close to Graaff’s pool,” Van Wyk said.
“The man, aged between 50 and 60, was taken out of the water by a bystander, and the paramedics declared him dead on the scene.”
Community services and health Mayco member Patricia van der Ross said: “It was a very tragic start to the new year on our beaches, with the drowning of a 10-year-old girl at the Strand, and then an adult male, who was swept off the rocks at Graaff’s pool in Sea Point.
“Our wish for our residents and visitors is always just to have a safe and enjoyable experience at our public facilities, and so these incidents have certainly cast a pall on our festive season. “I want to convey my sincerest condolences to the families.”
Van der Ross appealed to the public to make use of the City’s Identikidz project as an extra layer of protection and peace of mind for beachgoers, where teams are deployed at several popular beaches during the summer holidays to register children and issue identification armbands.