Lions gift $3000 to surf club

Midweek. Mike Taylor, left, of the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club, gratefully receives a stretcher and a first response kit, among other items, worth $3500 from Wayne Fleming of the Masterton Host Wa

A Masterton service club has put the proceeds of its hospitality into saving lives at Riversdale Beach.

The Masterton Host Waipoua Lions Club last week donated more than $3000 of equipment to the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club -- with most of the money going towards a rapid response kit and a "spinal board" or immobilising stretcher.

Besides a formal presentation of the equipment, the meeting at Masterton's shearing museum, the Wool Shed, was also to thank the volunteers behind the raising of the money, which is raised annually through the billeting of students visiting Wairarapa from the South Island's Lincoln University.

Club president Selwyn Tomlin said the hosting went back 12 years and had raised $60,000 to $70,000, which is all returned to the community.

Lions members and friends and families out in the community had made their houses available for the students, who come to Wairarapa annually in April for a field trip.

Billets used to come for two nights but for the past three years have stayed on night, with one year 82 students accommodated.

Previous recipients of the Lions' generosity have included Wairarapa Hospital, with the purchase of six wheelchairs.

A highlight for the Lions was raising $50,000 -- in part from the billets but also from other sources -- to outfit a room at Ronald McDonald house in Auckland so families can stay near their sick children.

Mike Taylor, leader of the Riversdale Surf Lifesaving Club, said medical equipment was vital at the beach because help was at least 40 minutes away by ambulance.

Recent rescues this year had included a young man who "suddenly went face down" in the water for an unknown reason, and had to be pulled out and resuscitated, a fisherman bitten in the lower leg by a shark, and a woman who had had the top of her finger cut off by a long line.

Mr Taylor said the beach has about three helicopter callouts a year.

Riversdale Beach is well known for its rips, which occur "all the way down the beach".

Lifeguards are often asked why the flags are placed so close together, but Mr Taylor said, "ten metres either side, there is a rip".

The spinalboards are important because "a lot of injuries out in the surf are spinal, and with the board and its straps a patients head could be immobilised, Mr Taylor said.

The first response kit is the first thing grabbed by a lifeguard in an emergency, along with a defibrillator if there is a likely heart problem, Mr Taylor said -- and the provision of the new kit means there can now be one posted at both ends of the beach.