By Anthony O. Miller
ABOUT two-dozen jet-ski operators yesterday tossed flowers into the sea outside Larnaca in memory of the Norwegian tourist who drowned there on Saturday despite their warnings, Cyprus Water Sports Association President Demetris Hadjidemetriou said.
“We put flowers into the sea” near the Lordos Beach Hotel at Pyla Beach in Dhekelia, “and we erected two signs saying: ‘This (beach) is a death trap’, ” Hadjidemetriou told the Cyprus Mail.
“It’s a life-guarded beach,” he said, “but unfortunately it was packed with swimmers that day. They had 10 people in trouble at the same time.” The lifeguards and the jet-ski vendors “managed to take out everybody except this lady,” he said.
The drowned tourist, Anna Lisa Efstrathiou, 45, was in the water with her three children, he said. “The life-guards and the water-sports people managed to take out the three kids, but unfortunately the lady was dragged onto the rocks by the water.”
“There were heavy waves that day in that area, Pyla Beach,” Hadjidemetriou said. “That area has a strong undertow, and people swimming there can easily be sucked under or dragged onto the rocks. They don’t have any control.”
Hadjidemetriou said the drowning might have been avoided, had the authorities listened to warnings jet-ski vendors made on July 9 to Communications and Works Minister Leontios Ierodiaconou, and to warnings made earlier by the beach’s lifeguards.
“In our proposal that we made to the minister a few weeks ago, on July 9, we were very specific about the points at this area where the drowning took place — that this place is a death-trap,” he said.
“We also made a little map at the end of our proposal, with an ‘X’ at the point that’s really dangerous,” he continued. “Unfortunately they didn’t take any notice of that. They kept the place open for the swimmers.”
He said he also had “a letter written on May 29 by the lifeguards in that area to the district officer, saying specifically: ‘This area is a death trap. We suggest you remove this section of the coast from the swimming area.'”
Again, he said, “nobody listened. We took this letter to Ierodiaconou, but nobody gave it any attention.”
As to the jet-ski operators’ own problems, Hadjidemetriou said the Marine Police were no longer threatening them with arrest, fines and confiscation of their equipment if they did not move their rental sites to new government-approved locations.
Instead, he said, the police were enforcing the new law barring the operation of jet-skis and other motorised water craft during the summer siesta hours of 1pm to 4pm.
“This is only for the professionals,” he said. “The law was made just for us. No private jet-ski owners” are being ordered to stop using motor craft during the siesta hours, he said.
“If the jet-skiers are private (parties), the police don’t bother” to enforce the new law, he said.
The siesta-hours ban on jet-ski use was passed by the House of Representatives earlier this year. The jet-ski operators say the new law, plus Ierodiaconou’s recent edict restricting jet-ski rental sites, is driving them out of business.
Ierodiaconou’s departmental order earlier this summer required water-sports vendors to move their rental sites and sea-access corridors from swimming areas to the margins of tourist beaches.
The new water-sports regulations are the government’s reaction to at least three ski-jet accidents last year, which killed one British tourist and seriously injured three others.
