CHARITY
Supporting these brave few could save your life
If you fell into the River Severn in Gloucestershire and needed rescuing, heaven forbid, it would not be the excellent RNLI which came to your aid. North of the M4 bridges, in the treacherous tidal waters of the Severn Estuary – which can rise from your toes to above your head height in 40 minutes – the deadly sandbanks, swirling eddies and silty waters, are out of its remit. Fortunately, we have the men and women of SARA – the Severn Area Rescue Association – whose generations have been scrambling to our rescue since 1973. Its five inshore lifeboats are tasked by HM Coastguard to incidents in and around the Severn Estuary, including the tidal lengths of the rivers Wye and Usk. Emergency services rely on SARA’s rare expertise when the county is hit by floods, to rescue and evacuate. All year round they call it, day and night, to use specialist skills to locate the missing – in or out of the water - from the elderly to the mentally ill and vulnerable. Events like the Gloucester Tall Ships, rowing regattas and dragon boat races, could not take place without SARA riding close by, typically just out of the spotlight. Like the RNLI, the Gloucestershire-headquartered SARA is also funded solely by donations. Which brings us to the money. Here the comparison is stark.
‘staff’ and the ageing two-stroke engines (all bar one) which propel the lifeboats that launch from its six stations, was fuelled by £223,000. There are stations at Sharpness, Gloucester, Tewkesbury,Wyre Forest, Beachley and Newport. “I don’t want you to make a big deal out of the difference in the money,” said Hugh Inwood, one of the SARA volunteers sat with Punchline pondering how to raise the emergency service’s profile and bolster its stressed coffers. What he meant was, he would never ever knock the mighty and wonderful work of the RNLI. And who would? What he didn’t say, was that SARA needed someone to throw it a buoyancy aid. And neither do we. It is not in trouble. But if you consider the incredible task it does, £223,000 very quickly looks like, well, a drop in the ocean. Sharpness, where Mr Inwood is deputy station chairman, ideally needs to increase fundraising in 2020 by £50,000. “We go to at least 30 emergencies a year,” said Mr Inwood, speaking just days before this year’s floods increased that figure significantly. “The Severn is a phenomenally dangerous piece of water, filled with banks of mud and rocky shelves. Tides can rise from 0.6 metres to 10.8 metres. It gets
In 2018 the RNLI banked £186 million towards its running costs. SARA, its 150 unpaid
118 | December 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com
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