Coast Guard volunteer dies in search for missing man in Kilkee

They’re a tight-knit bunch that, at times, respond to harrowing calls: They’ve known situations where there have been fatalities, and some of those people they knew personally.

So said Kilkee, Co Clare-based Irish Coast Guard volunteer Jenny Carway in an interview with The Clare Champion two years ago. Her words are especially poignant today as she and her coastguard colleagues mourn the devastating loss of one of their own.

In an awful reversal of roles, the people who regularly put their own lives in peril to save others found themselves the focus of a dramatic air and sea search that ended in tragedy for Caitríona Lucas, mother-of-two in her early 40s, from Ballyvaughan.