The confirmation came in a report of the full rehearsal of the ‘Phuket Marine Disaster Response Plan’ staged at Patong Beach yesterday (Nov 29).
The rehearsal simulated three emergency response exercises to be performed in front of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin tomorrow. (See story here.)
The rehearsal, under observation by Phuket Governor Sophon Suwannarat and other senior provincial officials, included an air-sea rescue by a Royal Thai Navy helicopter in a simulation of a tour boat in distress with tourists left struggling in the water.
The rehearsal also included a simulated rescue by lifeguards recovering a tourist drowning while caught in a rip current ‒ under the assumption that the tourist ignored red ‘no swimming’ flags and lifeguards’ warnings.
The third simulation rehearsed yesterday was an armed police response team simulating taking down an armed tourist posing a public danger on Bangla Rd after using a computerised face-detection system (which officials called ‘AI’) to identify the suspect.
All three exercises, which caused a spectacle for tourists in Patong yesterday, will be repeated tomorrow.
However, an official report of the rehearsal yesterday marked that there were 100 lifeguards in total to protect tourists at Phuket beaches.
With 11 main beaches popular with tourists, that leaves fewer than 10 lifeguards on average at each beach. Obviously, busier beaches having more than 10 lifeguards means fewer lifeguards at other beaches.
The main tourist beaches along Phuket’s west coast are: Nai Harn (about 570m long), Kata Noi (about 760m), Kata (about 1.53km), Karon (about 3.32km), Patong (about 2.53km), Kamala (about 1.9km), Surin (about 1.1km), Bang Tao / Layan / Leypang (about 5.7km), Nai Ton (about 1km), Nai Yang (about 2.4km) and Mai Khao (about 10.2km, including Sai Kaew Beach)*.
In total, that leaves the 100 lifeguards to patrol more than 31km of beaches along Phuket’s west coast - an average of one lifeguard every 310m.
However, with lifeguards stationed in pairs, that leaves two lifeguards covering more than half a kilometre of beach, each.
This does not include the smaller, but popular, tourist beaches, such as Freedom Beach, located between Patong and Karon.
Of note, while Patong lifeguards each month publicly report statistics of surf rescues they perform and other incidents to which they respond, no other lifeguard units on the island publicly report the number of their lifesaving rescues.
Despite a provincial waster safety committee set up last year, Phuket officials do not report any statistics of tourist rescues or drownings.
* Approximate measures obtained via Google Maps