Safety Measures and Policing
Bathing and swimming are illegal at Marina beach since the undercurrent in the region is very strong, and there are no lifeguards stationed here. As many people throng the beach, quite often there are drowning mishaps. An estimated five sea-bathers are drowned every month at the beach, and most of the swimmers are dragged by the tides into the debris of a tramp ship SS Damatis that sank off the beach during a cyclone in 1966. Police personnel and lifeguards constantly patrol the whole area, which is divided into seventy-two sections, by means of horses and all-terrain vehicles (known as beach buggies). Five spots off the beach, including near the Anna Square, Kannagi Statue, Triumph of Labour Statue and behind Vivekananda House, have been identified by the police as extremely unsafe due to the presence of whirlpools and rock projections in the seabed. In 2010, 75 people drowned in the sea along the 5-km stretch of the beach. Of this, the 1-km stretch from Anna Square to the Anna swimming pool is considered the most dangerous with as many as 29 persons drowning in the sea in 2010. The deep sea in this stretch is considered to still hold parts of the smacked ship. In 2011, in addition to the tie-up with Coast Guard security personnel, the city police planned for a tie-up with the fire and rescue services department to provide a stand-by rescue team at the beach to save people from drowning. The rescue team, equipped with a rubber boat and a motor-fitted boat, was planned to be stationed at the Anna Square police station or the Marina police station.
The law-enforcing agencies is planning to bring the beach under close watch by means of two watchtowers and at least a dozen surveillance cameras. The Chennai Corporation has agreed in principle to create the security infrastructure based on a proposal sent by the Greater Chennai Police. The watchtowers are proposed to be erected behind the Triumph of Labour statue and the Gandhi statue. In August 2012, the government sanctioned six more all-terrain vehicles for patrolling the beach.
Despite intensive patrolling, illegal bike races and night races are also held along the stretch, resulting in public nuisances and, at times, death of the racers.
Read more about this topic: Marina Beach
Famous quotes containing the words safety, measures and/or policing:
“A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion. He becomes a perjurer, all his thoughts and emotions being directed with reference, not to an accurate and just appraisal of the real world but rather to the safety and exaltation of his loved one, and the madness with which he pursues her, transmogrifying his attention, blinds him like a victim.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Away with the cant of “Measures, not men!”Mthe idle supposition that it is the harness and not the horses that draw the chariot along. No, Sir, if the comparison must be made, if the distinction must be taken, men are everything, measures comparatively nothing.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)
“Some days your hat’s off to the full-time mothers for being able to endure the relentless routine and incessant policing seven days a week instead of two. But on other days, merely the image of this woman crafting a brontosaurus out of sugar paste and sheet cake for her two-year-old’s birthday drives a stake through your heart.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)