Tributes have been paid to Irish Coast Guard winchman Philip Wrenn who has won a prestigious award for his role in rescuing two Italian brothers from the Atlantic off the Aran island of Inis Mór two years ago.
Wrenn, CHC Ireland winch team member of the Irish Coast Guard Rescue 115 crew based at Shannon, won the Billy Deacon search and rescue memorial trophy 2020.
He was presented with it for his bravery in rescuing brothers Giovanni and Ricardo Zanon in very challenging conditions in 2019.
The Zanon brothers were visiting Poll na bPéist or the “Worm Hole”, the naturally shaped sea pool cut out of limestone on the west of Inis Mór, when they fell some 20 metres into the Atlantic.
Rescue 115 was tasked to the scene, and Wrenn and winch operator Ciarán McHugh worked as a team to take the two men from the sea.
Wrenn was tending to the more injured of the two men when a series of waves almost washed all three into Poll na bPéist’s cauldron.
Wrenn and McHugh were interviewed about for the rescue for the Midas Productions Irish Coast Guard documentary by Darina Clancy for TG4 television’s Tabú series.
“We went off into a holding pattern....then we saw this set of waves coming offshore...from about a mile away,” McHugh recalled.
“It was like you left someone off the side of the road to wait for the bus, and then the bus comes and slaps them,” McHugh told Tabú.
The two Italians were treated at University Hospital, Galway. They were reunited with Wrenn and McHugh for the documentary, which was broadcast on TG4 in March, 2020.
The trophy conferred on Wrenn is named in memory of late Bristow Helicopters winchman Billy Deacon, who died during a Maritime and Coastguard Agency search and rescue (SAR) helicopter mission in 1997.
It is awarded to winchmen and/or winch operators working in the British and Irish search and rescue regions, and the RNLI lifeboat operations director chairs the award committee.
Rescue 118 winch team member Gary Robertson won the award in 2017 for his rescue of a fisherman who had become tangled in a rope off Arranmore island, Co Donegal in April, 2016.
The fisherman’s six-metre vessel had sunk and he was clinging to a lifebuoy, when the Sligo-based helicopter was scrambled by Malin Head Coast Guard on April 9th, 2016.
“I am accepting this award on behalf of the whole team on Rescue 115. As a team, we work together to execute a rescue and I am only one member of that team,” Wrenn said.
Minister of State for Transport Hildegarde Naughton said Wrenn had demonstrated “a level of professionalism and commitment that I have no doubt is a great source of pride not alone to his immediate family but to anybody who is involved with search and rescue”.
She said the award not only honoured him but the “extraordinary work of our Coast Guard”.
Irish Coast Guard acting director Eugene Clonan said that Wrenn’s “selfless act of bravery exemplifies the actions of all Coast Guard activities in this area along with the county council lifeguards and declared resources of the RNLI and Community Inshore Rescue Service. “
CHC General Operations Manager Ireland manager Robert Tatten said the award – a piece of bog oak sculpted by Brendan Collum entitled “Entwined” –was very appropriate.
It “reminds us that all our lives are entwined, even with strangers we may not have yet met,” Tatten said.
“Philip saved two people he had never met at Inis Mor without thought for his own safety, but his experience and the intense training he and all CHC staff go through enabled him to make that rescue safely,” Tatten added.