The Newhaven Lifeboat says it fears hoax callers might one day prevent them from helping someone genuinely in trouble after the third fake callout to Saltdean this year.
The RNLB Daniel L Gibson was launched at 11.45am on Monday, November 16 after the coastguard received a mayday, purportedly from a sinking vessel south of Saltdean.
The volunteer crew raced to the position given, assisted by two rescue helicopters and local coastguard teams on the clifftops, but an extensive search failed to find anything and the search was stood down at 1.50pm.
Coxswain Paul Legendre explained “Although we will always assume that any Mayday call is a real emergency and conduct a full search, we are becoming very concerned as this is third hoax with exactly the same information.
“Our biggest fear is that one day helicopters and lifeboats could be responding to one of these hoaxes and someone genuinely in trouble may lose their life.”
