When five students of the Gandhi Institute of Technology and Management (GITAM) drowned at Rushikonda beach on Wednesday, the number of casualties at this and other beaches along the Visakhapatnam coast in 2012 rose to 41. Last year, the number was 46.
The Vizag coastline has the dubious reputation of claiming 170 lives in drowning incidents since 2009, with nearly half this number occurring at Rushikonda beach, which is said to be one of the most crowded in India, along with RK Beach and Yarada.
The high number of drowning cases, 30 per cent of which has been women visitors from outside the district, is yet to stir the authorities into action.
The day after five friends drowned in Rushikonda beach in 2010, the police and GVMC authorities came out with proposals to curb the incidents of drowning. But two years later, not even a life guard has been deployed on a seashore that gets a high rip currents.
City police commissioner J. Purnachandra Rao maintained that the police is helpless when it comes to appointing life guards at Rushikonda. “We can only warn visitors and restrict visiting hours,” Mr Rao said. Former GVMC commissioner Ramanjaneyulu had announced that six life guards would be placed on Visakhapatnam’s beaches, but nothing progressed after he was transferred.
Rip currents are wind or wave currents that can be life-threatening and tend to be high during summer, according V.S.N. Murthy, scientist-in-charge at the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Visakhapatnam.