Service needs your help

Photo/File

Over the past year they have rescued 74 people and got them home safely - now Coastguard Wanganui needs your help.

It operates from a cramped and outdated base in Wharf St at Castlecliff, which it desperately needs to update if it is to maintain its effectiveness as a lifesaving operation.

That's why the Wanganui Chronicle has joined forces with the volunteer organisation in a bid to raise $640,000 for a new headquarters.

When they get a call on their pagers, the volunteers drop everything and rush to Wharf St to get the rescue boat out on the water. The unit's qualified radio operators work mainly from home and keep track of boaties 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

It is the only coastguard in New Zealand that keeps tabs on individual boats and raises the alarm when they are overdue for landfall.

But the workload is growing with more and more people participating in recreational boating activities - 900 boaties are now registered with Coastguard Wanganui.

And having radio operators work from their kitchen tables is not the best way to run an emergency service, while the difficult working conditions in the Wharf St radio room increases the time it takes volunteers to respond to a distress call - at a time when every second counts.

That's why the service has partnered with the Chronicle on its huge fundraising operation.

Coastguard is a charity, and it only gets 15 per cent of the money it needs each year from the Government.

Dennis McGowan, of McGowan and Associates, has drawn up plans for an extension to the Wharf St building and it has been costed at $640,000.

It will provide a new radio and operations room so that police can set up search and rescue teams there during urgent operations. It will have space downstairs to store the rescue vessel and launch tractor still hitched together - at present, they have to be stored unhitched which again costs valuable time getting an emergency operation on the water.

The upgraded headquarters will also have a room for family members waiting for news of people lost at sea.

President Kevin McKenna said the unit had rescued 74 people in the past 12 months. In most cases, rescue means towing boats that have broken down back to shore, but there are more urgent situations where people are hurt or have a medical problem, or where boats are sinking or capsized and people are in the water.

Coastguard Wanganui is responsible for 900 square miles of sea between the Rangitikei and Patea rivers - a stretch of coast famous for its wild weather and dangerous river bar - and also operates on the city reaches of the Whanganui River.

It has $200,000 to put toward the new headquarters but it is now calling on the Wanganui community to help itreach its $640,000 target.

In the past 12 months, Coastguard Wanganui volunteers:

Provided 24-hour, 365 days a year radio cover.

Gave 6379 hours of service.

Responded to 10,151 radio calls.