Kevon Felmine

As thou­sands are ex­pect­ed to flock to the beach this East­er week­end, Coast Guard pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Lieu­tenant Com­man­der Kirk Jean-Bap­tiste is warn­ing seabathers that the beach­es are es­pe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous this time of year.His com­ments comes in light of the drown­ing of Shenelle Bac­chus, 22, of Diego Mar­tin, and Alex De­nesh Sookhoo, 29, in two sep­a­rate in­ci­dents last week­end.

Bac­chus, an em­ploy­ee of the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) and a moth­er of one, drowned at Tyri­co Beach, off the north­east coast, while bathing with friends and rel­a­tives around 4 pm on Sun­day. Her body resur­faced a short time lat­er.Sookhoo, a bus dri­ver and fa­ther of two, drowned while bathing with friends at Ce­dros on Sun­day. His body is yet to be found. His fa­ther, Namdeo Sookhoo, has been keep­ing vig­il at the beach wait­ing for his son's body to wash ashore.

Jean-Bap­tiste de­ployed more divers yes­ter­day to search for Sookhoo's body.To beach-lovers, he ad­vised: "En­joy the sea but re­spect the sea."Ex­plain­ing that at East­er times there are strong winds and sea cur­rents which cre­ate big­ger wave ac­tions, he said al­though the Coast Guard would be on pa­trol at the beach­es this week­end, seabathers need­ed to take per­son­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for them­selves and their chil­dren.

He added: "There are a lot of in­ci­dents around this time be­cause at this time of the year, the sea is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. The winds are stronger. The cur­rents are strong and if the winds are stronger, the wave ac­tions will be big­ger.So around East­er time, peo­ple have to be very care­ful in the wa­ter, es­pe­cial­ly when mov­ing with chil­dren.

"Nor­mal­ly life­guards work un­til late in the af­ter­noon and you should check which beach­es have life­guards . The last thing I have to say is lis­ten to the life­guards on du­ty. We make pa­trols but we are not an om­nipresent or­gan­i­sa­tion. We can't be every­where at the same time, nei­ther can the life­guards.

"The Coast Guard will be mak­ing its pa­trol, the po­lice will be mak­ings pa­trols on lands and the life­guards on the beach­es will be mak­ing pa­trols but we need peo­ple to be safe on the beach­es. The sea is no place to show off to your friends and your girl­friends as to how brave you are," Jean-Bap­tiste said.