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Malcolm Beattie surveys the damage after the access ramp was washed away.
A popular west coast beach faces a third weekend in a row with dangerously depleted rescue capacity after Cyclone Gabrielle swept away beach access for surf lifeguard equipment.
Port Waikato has been drawing hundreds of beachgoers daily at weekends, with lifeguards unable to use rescue boats and jet skis after the ramp was demolished by the storm when it struck on February 13.
That has Sunset Beach Lifeguard Service president Malcolm Beattie scared of what could happen, should swimmers or fishers get into trouble.
“It’s literally knife-edge danger country,” he said. “If people are in distress we’re in the s… and so are they, which is terrible.”
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The problem is compounded by beaches further north being cut off by storm damage to all but locals.
“The beaches up the west coast have all been closed, because of their damage, so they’re coming here literally in their bloody hundreds. We had several hundred people in the water on Sunday.”
In the event of a mass rescue, lifeguards would have to paddle out on rescue boards, potentially having to make grim decisions about who they could rescue.
“It is scary. We cannot do our job and that’s the case,” Beattie said.
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Faced with the danger, the lifeguards continue to patrol from the bank, and are warning the public, but can’t close the beach. “We just have to say, be careful, be warned.”
The club recently rescued groups of rock fishers on consecutive weekends, using rescue boats and jetskis.
If that happened now, they wouldn’t be able to reach them, Beattie said.
A combination of high winds coupled with high tides and very large swells caused the usual access ramp to collapse when Cyclone Gabrielle struck, he said.
The task now was to identify another spot where the club could get access to the beach, potentially alongside the destroyed one.
Tom Lee/Stuff
Port Waikato is a popular spot for swimmers, surfers and fishers.
A council spokesperson said the council recognised the urgency and was working to restore access as quickly as possible, but could put no timeframe on when that might happen.
“It’s a little bit trickier than just simply cutting through the earth and doing a new access way very quickly, for fear of it washing away straightaway,” the spokesperson said.
“We have to work with regional council from the coastal engineering point of view, because it cuts into the stream access.”
Tom Lee/Stuff
Malcolm Beattie sizes up the drop after Cyclone Gabrielle hit Port Waikato.
It also needed to be safe for people to use, the spokesperson said.
Port Waikato’s Sunset Beach is near a growing population in centres such as Pokeno and Tuakau. “This is the closest beach for them to recreate,” Beattie said. “It’s closer than Raglan. So they come here, and they’re coming here in their bloody thousands.
“We don’t mind, that’s our job to look after them. But when we can’t get on the beach, it scares the hell out of me.”
Weather Watch was forecasting partly cloudy conditions for both days of the weekend, while MetService was forecasting waves up to 1.7m high at 4pm on Saturday and 2.3m on Sunday.
Tom Lee/Stuff
The view from the Sunset Beach carpark.
