More pools a community responsibility, lifeguard says

Westshore Surf Lifesaving Club's senior lifeguard instructor Brian Quirk says the community needs more pools to improve our water safety as too many children cannot swim.

A regional lifeguard has called on the public community to step up and take responsibility for ensuring more public pools are built in Hawke's Bay.

Over more than five decades of life guarding, Westshore Surf Life Saving Club director of life guarding Brian Quirk has seen an increasing number of people that don't know how to swim and blames the region's small amount of public pools for the problem.

"You've only got to look back 30 years ago and virtually most of the schools in Napier had a pool of some sort and kids were expected to learn to swim," he said.

"You don't need to be a rocket scientist to realise we're going to end up with a catastrophe."

While acknowledging that school pool costs may be "exorbitant" Mr Quirk said this issue could easily be cured by having a community facility where schools are granted cheap access.

"I think in view of the costs of pools in schools maybe it's time the community started looking at it more as a general community safety thing."

"We get kids turning up to Junior Surf who can't swim. They like the water, love the water, but can't swim. Whilst we don't teach them to swim we certainly point them in the right direction and a lot of kids get the impetus from being in the surf club to actually go out and learn,"

"I think in the long term the pool costs have go to be accepted as just being part of keeping our community safe."

Mr Quirk said he was not a proponent of the velodrome and thought there was a far greater need for a good pool, similar to the public pool in Kilbirnie, Wellington.

As an advocate for more swimming safety resources, Mr Quirk pointed out that any beach in Hawke's Bay has the capacity to be dangerous.

"The drownings in any one year in New Zealand are about one third of the road toll and yet very little money is put into water safety," he said.