Royal National Lifeboat Institution volunteers must live close to the lifeboat station, because when their pager goes off, whether it be morning or night, their aim is to launch the boat within two to three minutes.
Alan Keville works in Dublin city centre but lives just down the road from Dún Laoghaire’s RNLI station, where he is a volunteer helm. He is usually on call in the evening and night-time, or on weekends. But volunteers never know when that pager is going to go off, only that it could be when they least expect it – while in the shower, shopping for groceries, or out with friends, for example.
Sometimes Keville returns from a 2am call-out at 4am, and nobody in his house knows that he was out, so he just gets back into bed.
The volunteers are from all walks of life, from insurance salespeople, to hairdressers, to restaurant workers. But when they go on to the boat, they work seamlessly together, having each other’s backs with one common goal – saving lives at sea. And if they cannot save a person’s life at sea, the aim becomes to bring that person’s remains home, to bring closure to their family.
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