A multi-agency group warns that lives of rescuers on Galway’s river Corrib are being put at risk by salmon and eel traps on a city stretch below the Salmon Weir.
As The Sunday Independent report, Galway’s chief fire officer Gerry O’Malley has said the structures owned by Inland Fisheries Ireland (IFI) pose “significant risk” to his staff.
The structures associated with a salmon pass known as “The Queen’s Gap” and eel traps are out of bounds now to Galway Fire and Rescue Service crew.
A person caught in the fast flow in that area could die from impact, or could drown if caught in or pinned to one of the rails stretching across the river, O’Malley warns.
A body of a missing person, which was found in the river, had been trapped in the rails of one of the structures for almost three weeks, according to Galway City councillor and chair of the Claddagh Watch river patrol group Niall McNelis (Lab).
McNelis, who participates in the Inter-Agency Corrib Water Safety Group on behalf of Claddagh Watch, has tabled a motion on the issue for a city council meeting tomorrow (Mon, July 10).
“This is an issue of general safety for anyone on or near the river, but also the safety of rescuers,” RNLI lifeboat operations manager Mike Swan, also on the inter-agency group, says.
That safety risk came into very sharp focus in January of this year, when up to ten people were rescued after three rowing boats attached to the University of Galway and to Coláiste Iognaid secondary school capsized when the river was in flood.
“Several of the boats were caught at the top of the Salmon Weir. If any of those crew had been swept over the weir, they would not have survived the Queen’s Gap,” Swan confirmed.
Galway Fire and Rescue crews responded to 29 water rescue incidents in 2020, 57 in 2021 and 29 last year, most of which were on the river Corrib. The crews have responded to 18 separate water incidents, also mainly on the Corrib, this year to date.
IFI says the structures are “listed”, and it is “in ongoing discussions with Galway City Council to best understand how to manage these structures into the future”.
Read more in The Sunday Independent here