A man has been airlifted to hospital after he was recovered from the Shannon Estuary during a major search operation this morning.<\/p>\n
The man is understood to have been in the water for almost two hours and was spotted by the crew of the Waterford-based Irish Coast Guard helicopter, Rescue 117.<\/p>\n
The alarm was raised shortly after 9.00am when a person was reported \u2018overboard\u2019 from the Killimer to Tarbert ferry. The vessel’s crew immediately commenced a search of the area while the Irish Coast Guard was alerted. A second ferry also joined the search.<\/p>\n
Watch officers at the Coast Guard\u2019s marine rescue coordination centre on Valentia Island in Kerry mounted a significant search and rescue operation.<\/p>\n
The nearby Kilrush RNLI inshore lifeboat (ILB) was mobilised while the Kilkee unit of the Irish Coast Guard dispatched a team by road to assist in the search.<\/p>\n
Rescue 117 was tasked from its base in Waterford, while the Fenit RNLI all-weather lifeboat (ALB) was also requested to make its way to the scene along with the Ballybunion Coast Guard unit and Ballybunion Sea and Cliff Rescue unit.<\/p>\n
A number of vessels that were in the area at the time, including several yachts taking part in a local event and the Shannon Pilot boat also joined the effort. Vessels in the area, which were in a position to assist in the search, were requested to do so.<\/p>\n
Shortly before 11.00am, the crew of Rescue 117 reported seeing someone in the water a short distance west of the ESB\u2019s Tarbert Power station on the Kerry shore. Nearby search vessels were alerted and requested to make their way to the location.<\/p>\n
The Kilrush RNLI lifeboat reached the scene and quickly recovered the casualty onto their vessel.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The man was then winched from the lifeboat onto the helicopter and flown directly to University Hospital Limerick for treatment. The man is reported to be suffering from \u2018severe hypothermia.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0Once it was confirmed that the casualty had been located, the search operation was stood down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man has been airlifted to hospital after he was recovered from the Shannon Estuary during a major…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6248,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,6999,43,1907],"class_list":["post-6247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-munster","tag-news","tag-regional"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6247\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}