Cit­i­zens are now two days off from cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas Day but still in height­ened sea­son­al cel­e­bra­tions, with yet an­oth­er long week­end ahead af­ter to­day’s last hol­i­day from this week­end.

Of course, not all cit­i­zens par­tic­i­pate in ac­tiv­i­ties as­so­ci­at­ed with the birth of Je­sus Christ. Some choose, in­stead, to vis­it rivers and beach­es.

In that re­gard, this news­pa­per takes time to plead with cit­i­zens to take all the nec­es­sary pre­cau­tions for such trips, in­clud­ing care­ful­ly plan­ning them be­fore, dur­ing and af­ter the event.

This in­cludes obey­ing rough seas alert put out by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices.

The Me­teo­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has had a haz­ardous seas alert (Or­ange Lev­el) for most of the past two weeks. The alert, due to end to­mor­row at noon, warned that large waves mea­sur­ing near­ly 3.5 me­tres are ex­pect­ed along nearshore, north-ex­posed coast­lines and chop­py con­di­tions are al­so like­ly along north­ern-fac­ing coast­lines in the Gulf of Paria. It added that these con­di­tions will be am­pli­fied at high tides and ex­ac­er­bat­ed at spring tides. The TTMS warned sea­far­ers to ex­pect large bat­ter­ing waves, dan­ger­ous con­di­tions for swim­ming and small craft op­er­a­tions, very high surf and dan­ger­ous rip cur­rents near af­fect­ed coast­lines.

Mean­while, Va­len­cia East/To­co coun­cil­lor Ter­ry Ron­don yes­ter­day is­sued his own warn­ing those ven­tur­ing to To­co, where many flock for camp­ing and sea bathing, to be ex­treme­ly cau­tious, as the wa­ters there were deemed dan­ger­ous.

De­spite the long­stand­ing TTMS ad­vi­so­ry, three cit­i­zens, Ja­da Wil­son, 18, Sandy Mo­hammed, 37, and Daniel Bor­den, 19, have lost their lives at beach­es.

How­ev­er, both Ms Wil­son and Ms Mo­hammed re­port­ed­ly drowned while tak­ing ill-ad­vised risks. In the case of Ms Wil­son, from all re­ports, this young woman could not swim yet ven­tured in­to ex­treme­ly rough wa­ters at Tyri­co Bay—a site known for rougher than usu­al waves even on a nor­mal day. Ms Mo­hammed too, al­so re­port­ed­ly drowned while bathing at night in a rocky area at Quinam Beach in Siparia. Last­ly, Mr Bor­den drowned at Grafton Beach in To­ba­go while hero­ical­ly try­ing to save his friend Eli­jah Max­im.

Trinidad and To­ba­go is sur­round­ed by wa­ter, yet hun­dreds of cit­i­zens nev­er learn to swim. De­spite this, many peo­ple take ex­treme risks dur­ing wa­ter-based ac­tiv­i­ties.

Al­so, the pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned prac­tice of not re­view­ing Met Of­fice ad­vi­sories pri­or to de­part­ing for the beach is one of the car­di­nal sins com­mit­ted by those un­der­tak­ing such ac­tiv­i­ty.

Con­sum­ing al­co­hol while on the beach is al­so a prac­tice that can im­pede one’s abil­i­ty to dis­cern dan­ger from un­der­cur­rents while in the wa­ter. Nev­er mind the fact that some beach­go­ers are guilty of not obey­ing ad­vice from life­guards on du­ty.

We un­der­stand that this is a time of the year when fam­i­lies seek to spend as much time to­geth­er. But this is al­so why we are urg­ing the adults in­volved in such ac­tiv­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly those in charge of mi­nors, giv­en that school is out, take all the pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures to en­sure their loved ones leave and re­turn home safe­ly. Chief among those safe­ty mea­sures is heed­ing the Met Of­fice’s ad­vi­so­ry since this can guide one’s be­hav­iour long be­fore en­ter­ing the sea.