Teenage girl fights for life after dramatic sea rescue in Blackpool

The girl, 18, thought to be from Cheshire, is believed to have been on a night out in the resort with two friends when she slipped off a concrete walkway near to the Beach House Bistro and Bar on Friday night.

The alert was raised and within a matter of minutes she was found floating face down in the water by an RNLI crew.

It is thought she may have been dashed against the sea wall by waves and knocked unconscious and suffering serious head injuries.

Paramedics carried out CPR before she was taken to Blackpool Victoria Hospital where she remains in a serious condition, and understood to be in an induced coma with family at her bedside.

“She looked in a pretty bad way,” said a spokesman for the Blackpool and Lytham Coastguard, who also attended the incident. Apparently she slipped off the concrete apron and into the water. She was conscious and upright at first, but by the time the lifeboat got to her she was face down.

“The RNLI crew did brilliantly. They recovered her very quickly, even though it was a struggle because the sea was quite rough at the time. From launching to landing her it was only around six minutes.

“From what we could gather the girls were walking on the Lower Promenade when it happened. At the end of the steps there is a concrete apron which is very mossy and slippy. For some reason she walked down it and slipped into the water.

“She was conscious to start with, but we can only assume that the waves pitched her against the wall and knocked her out.”

The rescue was the first of two call-outs for the Coastguard off Blackpool in the space of seven hours over Friday night/Saturday morning.

In the second a woman was helped from the water near to the Imperial Hotel.

A search for her partner went on for more than an hour after it was believed he too had gone into the sea.

But he was later traced to his home in Fleetwood. The woman went to hospital to be checked over. “The couple had been out for the night and apparently they had a bit of an argument,” said the Coastguard spokesman.

“The woman was in the water up to her thighs and she was walked back to shore. But we were searching for about an hour and a quarter for someone else in the water who wasn’t there.The police managed to find the man back at home.”