A glider pilot’s report, red flare shots, a mannequin washed up on Rabbit Island and a boat stuck in the mud were all part of a stressful day for emergency services in Tauranga on Saturday, July 10.
These were elements in a training day coordinated by Tauranga Coastguard, says operations manager Simon Barker.
He says the day was a success, albeit stressful, as it pointed out many areas for improvement.

The day began with a call from a glider pilot reporting a boat overturned somewhere between Motiti and Karewa islands. There were also three people waving both arms, like a bird, on a nearby beach. A spotter plane was sent out to assist the search. Locating the area took longer than expected, which Simon says highlighted the need for an improvement in the planning of searching methods. This overall exercise took 3-4 hours.  
At 9.30am a call was made via VHF to headquarters about a boat sighted high and dry with the possibility of a person lying next to it. Coastguard responded to this in an exercise which Simon says proved beneficial because Tauranga has many shallow areas. He says their response was resource intensive, indicating that more resources need to go into smaller boats.
The third event for the day was a missing person search where a mannequin was used to simulate a dead person in the rocks surrounding Rabbit Island. The Omanu Surf Club responded to this alarm, which was for two missing snorkelers reported to police by an anxious relative. Simon says much of the time these calls are false alarms, but coastguard and police “always work to assume the worst scenario”.
He says in this exercise they learned there was a communications problem with the channels used from the tower to the surf club.
The fourth exercise involved shooting flares and despite efforts taken to alert the public that these flares were for an exercise, Simon says a few 111 calls were made regarding them. Two flares were fired from a boat near Papamoa. A search plane was sent out to locate this boat, which was also reported to be on fire. The Maketu Coastguard also responded and reached the boat to find ‘injured’ people aboard so the TECT TrustPower Rescue Helicopter was dispatched.
Organisations involved in the day’s training were: Waihi Beach, Tauranga and Maketu Coastguards, Tauranga Land Search and Rescue, Tauranga Emergency Communication Group, Omanu and Mount Maunganui Surf Life Saving, Harbour Master, TrustPower TECT Rescue Helicopter, BOP Air Patrol, St John Ambulance and Tauranga Victim Support.

By Hillary Entwistle