Llandudno Coastguard news
6 mins ·
We were paged shortly after midnight last night, along with Conwy Lifeboat, after numerous 999 calls were made to North Wales Police and to us reporting 2 red flare sightings, with one landing on the A55 near to the Conwy Tunnel.
A search of the river was immediately commenced, with us searching on land and the lifeboat searching the water.
During our search, three young persons were located leaving the area of the flare sightings and they were asked a few questions to try and gather more information. The answers they gave started leading us to believe that this may not have been a genuine distress signal.
This added another line of inquiry, so as well as searching for a possible vessel in distress, we also began searching for spent flare casings on shore.
During our search, the Police located a handheld flare on the A55 carriageway which would have required a person to throw the flare into the road and therefore needed to be close enough to the carriageway to do so, which would be some distance from the water.
With this information, the Lifeboat was stood down as the river had been thoroughly searched with nothing found.
As we came to the end of our search area, we discovered parts of a spent flare casing, a flare storage box and scorch marks from a handheld smoke flare.
All this information was passed onto Holyhead CGOC who were happy that the flares had been fired from shore and that there was no genuine distress.
This incident tied up valuable search and rescue resources, who are all volunteers, as well as a number of Police resources.
If a genuine emergency call had been received, there would have been a significant delay in deploying resources as we were committed to the search.
Flares are dangerous pyrotechnics that if used incorrectly can lead to serious injury or death. The fact they were thrown towards the A55 could potentially have caused a catastrophic collision which could have ended in tragedy.
We hope those responsible see this post and are able to reflect on their irresponsible behaviour. We also hope others see this message in the hope that we can deter any future incidents.