Stranded Hartlepool pair refuse coastguard rescue

Two people who were yesterday cut off by the rising tide at the mouth of the River Tees at Hartlepool refused a lifeboat rescue unless the emergency services also agreed to save their shopping trolley full of driftwood. The Maritime And Coastguard Agency (MCA) explains that at 4:14 pm, Humber Coastguard received a report of a …

[Haku]

O_o

There truly is no limit to stupidity.

[fifi]

Just can't win.

I can't help thinking there's a potential Darwin award in there somewhere, but if they HAD left them, then there'd have been a public outcry.

IMHO, as long as the wood is more important to them than their own safety, then they don't need rescuing.

[Marvin the Martian]

Hypothermia can do that to you

That argument doesn't hold, as hypothermia will make you very confused, and push you to wrong decisions. So this kind of death sentence is a bit unwarranted.

That said, I'd send them the bill for about £2500 in helicopter time etc. For that price I'd bring their wood home with a taxi though. Also they're clearly guilty of stealing a shopping trolley, the chance they bought it honestly being nil.

Letting people drive off in such a state moves the danger from themselves to other road users and seems borderline criminal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: hypothermia

Indeed, hypothermia can make you confused and stubborn. Mild hypothermia, not so much - start shivering when your cold, get goosebumps and technically that's "mild hypothermia". The resounding hole in the argument is that *she* was suffering it. He was just fine and dandio from the report I read (the linked official one).

[Lawrence 7]

"s'seized the wood and threw it in the river".

Thats exactly what i was thinking at the start of the article.

Cretins!

[ravenviz]

Re: "s'seized the wood and threw it in the river".

I think that was a bit over the top but they should definitely have been fined or charged for carriage.

[grimreality]

Should have been left to their own devices

Prime example of what Darwins Theory of Evolution is a pile of crap. If it was true they would have and should have dies their in the cold as thier DNA should not be handed on to future generations.

The alternative is they should be charged for the cost of the rescue.

[Jay Castle]

Harsh!

"Prime example of what Darwins Theory of Evolution is a pile of crap. If it was true they would have and should have dies their in the cold as thier DNA should not be handed on to future generations."

Personally, I think people who can't spell or use punctuation correctly shouldn't be allowed to breed either, but I don't hope they 'dies in thier cold'.

Harsh justice, from a cacky-fingered commenTARD!.

[Bilgepipe]

Not Possible

If people who can't spell or use punctuation correctly suddenly died out, there wouldn't be enough humans left to sustain the species.

[Goat Jam]

Yes

But those of us who are left would have a damn good crack at it!

Mines the dirty overcoat, thanks.

[Lionel Baden]

awwww

does that mean i have to neutralise my kids ??

my grammer is well shit ....

[SynnerCal]

Quick put them on the TV

They're ideal first contestants in a new gameshow that I'm designing "Are you smarter than a Pidgeon?" ... they'd obviously lose to the feathered feather-brains.

I'm a supporter of the RNLI and it really steams me to think that these bozo's were effectively trying to blackmail the responding crew into taking their junk. Heck, the crew are giving up their time, and possibly putting their lives at risk. Can the CPS wrangle a conviction for "wasting police time" and get these cretins on some community service?

Oh - one question on the comment about the plod who "seized the wood and threw it in the river" - I'm assuming that (a) there wasn't an envronmentally suitable alternative disposal method? and (b) that the lumber wasn't going to cause a "hazard to navigation". Be awful if the plod-dumped timber then holed the hull of some poor dinghy or yacht. Doh!

Icon because your average Somali pirate shows more sense than the subjects of this article.

[Annihilator]

wood ditching

a) environmental alternative - it's driftwood. It was already in the river. PC Plod just put it back.

b) navigation hazard - it's driftwood. And it was less than a trolley-full. The only way it would hole a hull is if the plod fired it from a cannon at said boat.

So yes, I imagine that they will get in trouble for it given the bizarre state of the world these days. :-(

Personally I'd have charged this couple with theft of a shopping trolley tho.

[Pete 2]

Sincerely hope they get billed

Lifeboats are paid for by OUR DONATIONS and manned (peopled?) by selfless individuals who risk their lives to help.I would like to think the people who are saved would be just the slightest bit grateful for the risks that strangers take on their behalf (though in practice, most aren't).

The last time I looked into it, many years ago, our local cops reckoned it cost £900 / hour for their helicopter to wake up 10,000 people in the middle of the night - and I suspect it costs much more now. It would be nice to know that at least some of their costs (as well as the lifeboat costs) could be passed on to the induhviduals who exploited the unwillingness of these crews to leave them to their fate.

[Alex Walsh]

O_o

Hope they get a very large bill for the helicopter call out.

[Anonymous Coward]

The RNLI is not greater than Charles Darwin

Interfering with natural selection is a crime against humanity. One whose effect will not be seen until many generations to come, but is a crime none the less.

Natural selection should have been left to take its course.

[Fred Mbogo]

Improved

What would have aced this article would have been: the cops seize the driftwood and then threw it into the river, tied on the couple's necks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have applied Darwin's laws...

... and just left them there

[Owen Sweeney]

I think I've got it!

I presume these were the famous pieces of driftwood that once were branches of the trees used to hang the monkeys in Hartlepool, all those years ago.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger for reference.

I've mailed Jeff Stelling of Sky Sports asking him to confirm this speculation.

[Michael Chester]

No law against suicide

Leave them a radio in case they change their mind though, once the first one succumbs to the waves, the other may well see sense.

Reminds me of the joke about the preacher in the flood:

"Oh lord, why did you not save me?"

"I sent 3 boats and a helicopter, what more do you bloody want?"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well

This *is* the town that once hanged a monkey as a French spy...

[Steven Walker]

It was guilty

And hanging was too good for it

[Intractable Potsherd]

But ...

... presumably not before it bred into the community, since it's these fuckwits seem likely to be it's descendants!

I'm not often in a position where I have to praise the police, but throwing the driftwood back into the river - real justice! I am a bit concerned about them being allowed to drive themselves away, though - making them walk home would have been even better!!

[Neil Hoskins]

Mmm.....

Difficult to know the whole truth from this report. It could be a bunch of people making a big fuss about nothing. Within an hour the tide would have been down by about a metre anyway and they probably could have just walked away. And knowing what today's nanny-state terminology is like, "minor hypothermia" could well be what our parents' generation knew as "a bit chilly".

[Anonymous Coward]

Geography lesson required.

Hartlepool, is miles up the coast from the mouth of the Tees river.

@Haku. When I was a bairn you'd often see people usually poor, with handcarts made from prams or any sort of wheels and axles, transporting scrap wood or coal, as they where really hard up. You'd see them scavenging the sea coal on the black middens, a coal seam that was exposed at low tide. Over the last few years I've noticed that they have reappeared, sometimes carts, sometimes shopping trolleys or adapted baby buggies. Nice to see that after 13 years of Labour gangsters in government we are back to those dark days of poverty.

Notice that they did not call for rescue, and the wonderful police confiscated the wood and threw it in the river. ACAB.

[ToddRundgren]

@Geography lesson required.

Erm don't think so. Mouth of the Tees backs onto Seaton Carew golf club. Seaton Carew is a district of Hartlepool, and yes I was born there.

******in embarrasing being born there, when these Pickey bastards show symian levels of intelligence.

[Ancient Oracle funkie]

I'm not normally nasty but ...

Can't help but think that the police were quite restrained. If it were me, that couple would have ended up in the river along with the driftwood!

[Kikki D]

Canoe

Maybe they were collecting the wood so they could build a canoe , Seaton's not too far away ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Thelma & Louise ?

If they had no desire to be rescued, the nanny state should've left them alone. Bringing in a helecoptor only increased the cost to the tax payer.

Bootnote:

it notes the cops "seized the wood and threw it in the river".

I assume that afore mentioned cops will be presented to the local magistrate, fined and made to carry out community service for littering? Maybe they will also be fined for contamination of waterways.

[Daniel Wilkie]

FFS

Drift. Wood.

That came from the sea.

Ergo not littering.

[Justabloke 1]

they should have

built a raft. that way they would have saved the tax payer all that money. The rNLI guy's would have been tucked up safely in bed and they would have rescued themselves plus the driftwood!

Let's hope this pair never breed eh?

[LinkOfHyrule]

ah, this explains...

This explains all the abandoned shopping trolleys at the bottom of the sea then. They are a result of failed drift-wood salvage ops by nuttahs.

Mines the one with some scanky planks hanging out the pockets

[ravenviz]

"shopping trolleys at the bottom of the sea"

How do you know that?

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll be the usual tedious morons going on about "Darwin awards"

But it is possible that the couple's strange behaviour was partly caused by the hypothermia. Apparently "uncooperative and irrational behaviour" can be a symptom of hypothermia.

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah

that or "well, I may die of hypothermia standing here, but without

this bloody firewood I'm just going to die of hypothermia slightly later..."

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody good point...

I was going to post the same myself. Any boyscout would know the symptoms of hypothermia include not knowing that anything is wrong with you, irrational behaviour etc.

@Some of the other commentors, please try to see other sides of stories before making a reactionary comment like "they should have been left there to die" especially as this is the sort of comment that would be condemed by most here if it appeared in a certain daily right wing newpaper.

[Anonymous Coward]

Divers

I'm a lifeboat crewman, we get quite a few calls to retrieve divers. (Mostly dead ones)

You find obese guys with expensive hi-tech re-breathers going down to stupid depths and having a heart attack.

Apparently diving attracts fat people because they like the feeling of being weightless.

It's a strange world...

[Bilgepipe]

Lifeboat Crewman

Icon because you're a lifeboat crewman. Nuff said.

[Emilio Desalvo]

Weightless...

Well, I am overweight, and the sensation in water is good, but, hey! There are swimming pools!

[P.Nutt]

If I was in the life boat...

I would of told them I was counting to 10 and then driving/Sailing away if there asses were in the boat or not!

Just hope the bloody muppets get billed for the entire rescue caused by there own stupidity!

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Police littering

The natural habitat of driftwood is in fact in coastal aquatic environments, so rather than littering the filth were simply releasing it back into nature.

[Velv]

Throwing the wood in the river...

errr, wasn't the problem that they were collecting the driftwood and the tide came in.

Isn't the driftwood just going to wash ashore again, encouraging the idiots to go back for it ? Let's face it, given their proven track record or refusing to be rescued then refusing medical assistance, they clearly haven't learned of the dangers.

Perhaps the driftwood should have been rescued and they protagonists thrown in the river - the wood clearly has more intelligence.

[Frostbite]

Hypothermia

If "uncooperative and irrational behavior" is a symptom of hypothermia then my office is full of people suffering from it.

[Rob]

oh dear...

... it appears hyperthermia is now pandemic then as I too have seen these symptoms being exhibited by many I work with.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Is hypothermia a requirement ...

... for being a government minister, then? Do we merely need to turn up the thermostats in their offices in order for all the lunacy to go away?

[kissingthecarpet]

Re:Geography lesson required

There's a film called 'Seacoal' (I think), & very depressing it is too....

[Winkypop]

But doesn't a good captain...

....go down with his trolley?

[AlistairJ]

I really can't believe you lot

First of all, they didn't ask for the massive over-zealous rescue attempt. They were merely scavenging for driftwood and got a bit wet and chilly. Big deal, none of this is even slightly illegal, except perhaps the twocing of a shopping trolley.

Minor Hypothermia = shivering. Again, bigo dealo.

The real story here are the police acting illegally in seizing the driftwood which they had no power to do, and secondly the clearly illegal disposal of said driftwood.

I donate to the RNLI they are mostly a wonderful service and deserve great praise for most of what they do (although they can keep their patronizing periodicals). Any of you lot who cite Darwin or think these people must be idiots really must learn to read properly. Jeez. Monday already.

[SynnerCal]

True, I can't believe you either

AJ said "First of all, they didn't ask for the massive over-zealous rescue attempt. They were merely scavenging for driftwood and got a bit wet and chilly."

I'm guessing (apologies if I'm wrong) that the Coasties that were there first have enough medical training to recognise hypothermia. Madam had it (okay minor) so unless the bozo-two had a boat of their own standing by then they needed rescue. The clue to this is in the word "stranded" in the second para of Lester's article - and if you missed that then there's two uses of the phrase "cut off" to backstop it..

So if they had left them, then they may have collected their Darwin Award, in which case the Scum (and other tabloid bogpaper) would be screaming "Hartle-plod lets couple die" or similar, questions in Parliment, etc.

Be interesting to understand if Mr Bozo had noticed that 'er indoors was no well, in which case surely he'd want her rescued.

Still, it all ended happily, no one got hurt/killed, and some folks get a laugh at their expense.

[AlistairJ]

Wrong, not all happy

Why? They went home without the driftwood after being dealt with by heavy handed police acting illegally. Jeez, try to see beyond the Sun style reporting of "look at these idiots" story lines.

[Scott Broukell]

Answer ....

Coastguard crew pile said driftwood up on sand bank, douse with petrol (from the spare can on board their craft), stand back, ignite and say good day to you - thereby reducing the risk of hyperthermia long enough for said peeps to get back to shore at the next ebb tide and saving the tax payer a bob or two on whirly birds etc.

[Law]

thing is...

I'm in two minds... on the one hand, I fancy seeing natural selection kick in and removing the couple from future procreation. But on the other hand, I know many people in shock say and do extremely silly things... it's not them being idiots, it's just the shock talking.

An example of this is I once took a lad to the hospital after finding him and his friends in a pretty nasty accident on a country road. His head was split right open, skull and all, and all he was bothered about was whether he got blood on his top. I also remember seeing something on tv about a woman who'd just had her leg run over by a bus, and it was in a very very bad way, and all she was concerned about was that the ambulance crew had cut back her trouser leg.

Either way it's a strange world.

[Lionel Baden]

when i broke my leg when i was a kid

i was the same

Refused to let ehm cut my tracksuit bottoms off

Well until they tried to take them off then i said ok cut them off !!!

so technically went the water started to reach their nostrils i guess they would of said screw the trolley

[S Larti]

The last news story...

... involving someone risking their life to get wood:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=7764618&page=1

[Neil Shepherd]

Oh Blimey, The Shock (or not)

As most of my family come from Hartlepool I can honestly say: "And? This seems pretty much par for the course"

This *is* the town that not only hung a monkey (as noted above) but also had a full centre page spread in the local paper about two pensioners pushing a dog about in a pram and a football ground where the supporters(?!?!?!?) changed ends at half time.

There are also rumours that they still burn witches and throw stones at passing planes, but I can't substantiate them :whistle:

[Robert Ramsay]

Good grief

what a horrible lot most of you are.

The whole point of being a human being is the ability to rise above the blind churnings of natural selection - i.e. show a bit of compassion and empathy.

The ability to put yourself in another's position is the one basic thing that sets us apart from say, reptiles. And you can't even manage that.

[Craig 28]

@Frostbite

Yes, because we all know that symptoms can't be representative of more than one condition or occur naturally on their own. As soon as anyone sneezes that definitively proves they have pneumonia.

Hypothermia is no laughing matter I'm sure. I don't object to this story, but the old "That sounds like the guys at work" remark is frankly worn out.

[Henry Wertz 1]

Reptiles

@Robert Ramsay, I agree. BUT, when they refuse rescue unless the rescuers can bring a load of wood with them, they really are asking to be left behind. Putting myself in another's position, they were probably pissed off that they got their wood thrown away, rather than grateful they were rescued.

[Anonymous Coward]

Should have left them

As why should the lives of brave individuals be risked for people that are nothing but shit stains on the pants of humanity

I say they should have been left there and removed from the gene pool.

[heyrick]

Yay for the cops!

(see subject)

[B99YYK]

Darwin Award ?

If ever there was an advert for a licence to breed this pair are it.

They got themselves into this by being selfish and stuipd and when offered assistance to get out of this they continued to be the lowest common denominator.

A waste of resource time and effort I pitty the poor emergency crews having to go out to morons like this.