A person has died and another is still missing in the sea off the coast of Coromandel, police say.<\/p>\n
St John said three helicopters, three ambulances and two managers responded to Opoutere Beach, north of Whangamat\u0101, after getting a call about the incident at 11.27am, when people saw a group of seven signalling for help.<\/p>\n
About 3.30pm, police said six people were pulled from the water. “One is in a critical condition and four are in minor-to-moderate conditions. Sadly, one person was unable to be revived.”<\/p>\n
One person was in a critical condition and four were in minor-to-moderate conditions, police said.<\/p>\n
Police, who were also at the scene, said a fixed-wing aircraft would assist with the search later this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Coastguard senior communications advisor Ben Parsons earlier said volunteers from Auckland Coastguard Air Patrol were on their way to Opoutere to help search for the missing swimmer.<\/p>\n
Whangamat\u0101 Surf Life Saving Club said on Facebook that the search-and-rescue underway involved lifeguards from several clubs.<\/p>\n
Today’s operation followed another incident yesterday when a swimmer at Whangamat\u0101 died outside of lifeguard patrol hours, the Surf Life Saving Club said.<\/p>\n
It warned swimmers to know their limits and to swim between the flags at patrolled beaches.<\/p>\n
Surf Life Saving’s National Lifesaving Manager Andy Kent said the group were likely to have been swimming – and that Opoutere beach was unpatrolled.<\/p>\n
It was a reminder for people to only swim between the flags in a patrolled area, he said.<\/p>\n
MetService said in its marine forecast for Coromandel today that winds could reach 25 knots, gusting to 35 knots in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
It expected the sea to become “rough for a time in the afternoon and early evening”.<\/p>\n
“Cloud increasing, then fair visibility in isolated showers from afternoon. Easterly swell 2 metres, rising to 2.5 metres this afternoon.”<\/p>\n
More to come…<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Source – RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A person has died and another is still missing in the sea off the coast of Coromandel, police say. St John said three helicopters, three ambulances and two managers responded to Opoutere Beach, north of Whangamat\u0101, after getting a call about the incident at 11.27am, when people saw a group of seven signalling for help. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2299,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192,174],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-2298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","category-nz-news","tag-featured"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2298"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2300,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2298\/revisions\/2300"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}