BY ISABEL EVERETT
Beachgoers are being urged to properly extinguish beach campfires after a woman suffered second degree burns at Redhead beach.
On October 10, Hannah Toby was supposed to be celebrating her wedding day, with celebrations postponed due to corona virus.
She and her fiancé, decided to instead head to Redhead beach for a picnic, but within five minutes she had stood on top of a hot coal which had been buried in sand.
Hannah has since spent the last few weeks travelling to Sydney to attend a burns clinic, and had to take time of work to recover.
"I have to put dressings on my foot daily and keep it covered. So please the next time you have a fire on the beach put it out properly don’t just cover it with a little bit of sand and walk away. Do the right thing and put it out," Miss Toby said in a Facebook post.
"I’m not sharing my story for attention, but just to raise awareness about the consequences of having fires on the beach and to hopefully save someone else the pain that I have been through."
Founder of the 'Readhead to Blacksmiths Beach -Let's Keep it Clean' group, Wayne Franklin, says he's heard of incidents like this happening before.
"What we've found is when you cover embers up with sand it actually retains the heat, it doesn't put them out for quite some time."
'We're just basically asking anyone that does use the area to make sure they get a bucket, I mean the oceans right there, and make sure the fires out."
"What were also asking is for people to bring with them an approved above ground fire pit. When they leave, they leave the beach clean and there's no contaminants that could injure anyone."
