General > Kayaking

Accident on the Clodagh, Co. Waterford last April

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Nuala:
Some people might remember hearing about this last April - two men drowned on a nasty weir in Portlaw in Waterford. The investigation reporthas been published if anyone wants a look.

Quite the impassable weir - there's photos at the end of the document.

Bill C:
The Diagram in appendix 8.3 made me pale.

Mark:
Nice to see the whole "inspect the entire river on foot before doing it" advice still being trotted out there.

rog:
What a god forsaken weir that is.

kmck:
Some parts of the report are good, especially the diagrams and suggestions for the weir. However the "walk the lenght of a river", no mention about not having a rope beyond that there were ropes there in the past but due to vandalism were not replaced. No mention of time of day, get on time was 19:30 sunset was 19:44. While the condition of the river was pointed out, with that weir the amount of water flowing through it won't make a huge difference to it being a dangerous design.
No mention of helmets in the report, the boats while new are of an old design not sure if they had decks on them? There is no mention of a spray deck in the report in the equipment list.

The recomendation of a SRT course rather than the RSR 1,2,3 shows that they didn't talk to Canoeing Ireland. SRT courses aren't directly designed for paddling, they're useful but contain stuff that isn't going to be of use to a kayaker in most situations.
My recomendation to the MCIB is to send someone on a course with Canoeing Ireland so they can have an idea of what it takes to run a basic river trip.

The real question is would you have tried to run that weir? More importantly would we have had rescue gear with us? Would we be getting on a river that late in the day?

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