Mandurah council takes first steps in emergency beach system roll-out

Following the tragic shark attack at Gearies Beach where local surfer Ben Gerring lost his life, Mandurah mayor Marina Vergone moved a motion in July 26 to adopt a new state-coordinated coding system for local beaches.

“When we have a tragedy happen, it is important that we look at how we could have improved the situation and this is one simple solution that I believe should be in place,” she said.

“This must be a state government coordinated system to include all emergency services, including Surf Life Saving, St John and Sea Rescue.”

The BEN system was to mirror Queensland’s coding GPS system which assigned each beach a unique code linked to GPS coordinates in 2011.

After consultation with several stakeholders, the City of Mandurah said it will be ‘very difficult to guarantee [state-wide] consistency given the various stages local governments [across WA] are at with their signage infrastructure’.

However, the talks served to identify several issues in the current Landgate location database, which is essential in maintaining location data and correct naming conventions, and the need for new signage to be installed across Mandurah.

There are currently many locations along the coast that are not officially named within the system, including Gearies Beach, which the City hope to register within the Landgate system.

They also hope to undertake public consultation in Mandurah to collect and register local beach names on the data set which are regularly used by beach-goers but are different to the official Landgate name.

In addition to the changes, the City has also engaged in a promotional campaign of established emergency mobile phone apps such as Emergency+, Shark Smart, and Dorsal App that allow residents to access emergency information such as phone numbers and locations to assist emergency crews.

Mandurah mayor Marina Vergone said these steps would be significant in reducing response times in emergencies.

“Our beaches and waterways are so important to our way of life and we need to take steps to help those in need,” she said.

“We recognise that this needs to be a State-wide approach so we are encouraging other local governments and the state government to get on board.”

The new beach signs featuring additional emergency information and the upgraded version of some existing signs will be installed by the end of March, with the official naming requirements taking longer.

Some of the new signs will be able to be reversed to advise of a beach closure.