Salmon beach is notoriously dangerous. Photo: Chloe Sipeki.
LIZ GIBBES
Amid growing community concern over drownings in Esperance, the Shire will construct a short beach-styled fence and signage at Salmon Beach to warn tourists about the dangerously slippery headland and rocks.
The initiative is the first step among a wider range of potential drowning prevention tactics being considered by various community stakeholders.
The planning of better safety precautions comes after the recent drowning of Ukrainian mother, Olya Tikhanova (40), the seventh person to drown on Esperance beaches in the last five years and the 19th since 2001.
A 56-year-old woman was also lost on another Esperance beach in late January.
On Tuesday, the Shire of Esperance Chamber of Commerce and Industry Executive Officer Jennifer Obourne speaking with the Weekender, stressed the desperate urgency of the situation.
“This is an initiative to save people’s lives.”
Guided by advice from the Esperance Coastal Safety Working Group, the Shire’s short fence design would encourage beach users to immediately stop and consider new, adjacent hazard signs.
The safety group is comprised of the Department of Transport, DPIRD, DBCA, Esperance Police, Esperance Surf Life Saving, SES Marine Rescue, “and everyone whose involved when there’s an incident,” Ms Obourne said.
“The group makes recommendations informally to council…so we can make budget allocations.”
She said the fence, would be a short version of those already typically used for safety and dune preservation on other beaches.
It would be implementable immediately, is affordable, and will mean people have to stop and observe the new signs which will feature internationally recognisable hazard symbols.
“The local community understand the hazards… but visitors don’t and the statistics we got given that day by the group – it’s really immediate, it’s 24 – 48 hours after arrival that people are dying.”
She said that there has been a huge surge in tourism since the Covid-19 lockdowns in the last five years.
“We want to give people an enjoyable experience in Esperance and just because we know how to live in this community and how to mitigate the risks of the coastal dangers, doesn’t mean the visitors do.”
“People are coming to Esperance because of our gorgeous, pristine environment.”
“Within 24-48 hours of these people arriving, they’re hitting the beaches straight away… but they don’t understand the risks.
“Why should they have to pay the ultimate penalty?”
“We’ve always been a summer tourist community because people come to the beaches for the summer school holidays, but during Covid when the borders were shut you couldn’t go overseas so you had to start exploring your own country, and, we’ve been discovered.”
“The growth has been phenomenal, the amount of people – everything’s full, everything that can be booked is booked and we’ve still got the overflow growing every single year because people are just turning up.”
The group had a raft of recommendations of things that council could do and other options used elsewhere, such as deploying surf life savers, are being considered and evaluated for viability.
