These were the scenes on Brean beach on Friday evening (May 6th) when a 4×4 was submerged by the incoming tide after it became stranded.
Brean’s beach warden alerted the Coastguard after the vehicle became stuck in mud while being driven half a mile down the beach.
Coastguards from Burnham-On-Sea and Weston, plus the BARB Search & Rescue hovercraft and RNLI were called to the scene at 4.30pm.
“The Beach Wardens had requested our assistance as the owner and his passenger did not want to abandon the vehicle,” explained a Coastguard spokesman.
“Eventually they saw sense and realised for their own safety they had to leave it to the incoming water.”
“By the time we arrived on scene only the roof was visible and the occupants were on the beach.”
“It was quickly established that the vehicle was not recoverable at that time and no persons were in danger.”
“The BARB Search & Rescue team were also in attendance, Burnham lifeboats were paged, and a Weston Coastguard team was also on scene as this could potentially have been a technical water rescue with two casualties.”
“Police took details of the owners and Burnham Coastguard did a visual check on the last known location of the now fully-submerged vehicle for any chemical spills before we were stood down and returned to station.”
A series of high Spring tides are due this weekend and beach users are being advised to check tide times and ensure they do not put themselves in potential difficulty. These photos, taken by Kevin Williams and Burnham-On-Sea.com, show the incident underway on Friday.
