Crews from the Westpac Life Saver Rescue service spend two hours scouring through tonnes of rubbish after a discarded distress beacon is activated at a Sydney tip, pinging nearby air traffic.
They then realised it coming from within a tip at Minchinbury.By 4:00pm they had moved five tonnes of junk but still hadn't found the beacon, chief executive officer Stephen Leahy said.
In the 2017-18 financial year, there were 1,150 non-distress activations of beacons and about 75 per cent were caused by mishandling or incorrect disposal, AMSA said. "It's also another reason why registering your beacon with AMSA and keeping your details up to date is so important. Mr Leahy said while more and more people were using distress beacons for activities such as bushwalking and boating, many didn't realise that throwing them in the bin isn't how they should be discarded."In this case, it was an unregistered beacon. It had just been discarded. This made it really difficult."
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