Burnham Area Rescue Boat
| Burnham Area Rescue Boat | |
| Independent lifeboat station | |
 Spirit of Lelania
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| Country | United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| County | Somerset |
| Town | Burnham-on-Sea |
| Location | The Esplanade, TA8 1BB |
| - coordinates | 51°13′59″N 3°00′00″W / 51.2331°N 2.9999°WCoordinates: 51°13′59″N 3°00′00″W / 51.2331°N 2.9999°W |
| Founded | 1994 |
| Owner | BARB SEARCH & RESCUE |
 Burnham-on-Sea
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BARB Search & Rescue (based in Burnham-on-Sea, Somerset) formed in 1992 as Burnham Area Rescue Boat and is a voluntary search and rescue service that operates two rescue hovercrafts and an inshore rescue boat in the Bridgwater Bay area. It is also a registered charity.
It mainly operates BBV hovercrafts, which have been used to rescue people, animals and vehicles from the mudflats of the Bristol Channel, but also has a small inshore rescue boat. The construction of its boathouse on the seafront in 1994 was the subject of a television programme and took just three days.
Burnham-on-Sea is on the shore of the Bristol Channel and has a long sandy beach, but nearby mudflats and sandbanks have claimed several lives over the years. At low tide, large parts of the area become mudflats up to 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) wide due to the tidal range of 15 metres (49 ft), second only to Bay of Fundy in Eastern Canada.
A lifeboat had been provided in the town from 1836, but this was withdrawn in 1930 leaving coverage for the area to the Weston-super-Mare lifeboat.
A charity appeal was established in 1992 by members of the local sailing community, to equip the town with its own inshore rescue boat. In June 1994, the boathouse was built in the space of three days by Anneka Rice and a team of builders for the BBC TV series Challenge Anneka.
The site and technical support was provided by Sedgemoor District Council.
In June 2002, a five-year-old holidaymaker, Lelaina Hall, was drowned on the mudflats at Berrow, north of the town.
A new appeal was launched in association with the Association of Search and Rescue Hovercraft (since renamed Hovercraft Search and Rescue UK) and with the backing of the Western Daily Press. This raised £115,000 to buy a rescue hovercraft, which could operate on mud and in shallow water that was unapproachable for the inshore rescue boat. It arrived on 22 March 2003, and during its first year of operation up to 50 people were rescued.
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Wikipedia