After their 9-year-old daughter drowned at sea, family create drift device to track missing persons

Saturday, 5 September 2020

Janine Branje says they wanted to find a way to thank the West Coast community for their help when her daughter, Emily, was swept away.

The father of a Christchurch schoolgirl who drowned on the West Coast last year has designed a drifter device to help prevent further fatalities in the water.

Emily Branje, 9, was swept out to sea by a rogue wave while sitting watching her grandfather whitebaiting on the banks of the Hokitika River mouth on September 26 last year.

Her body was found two days later by members of the public 30km away on the beach at Cobden near the mouth of the Grey River.

Emily Branje, 9, died after being swept out to sea at Hokitika in 2019.

Her family have launched the Emily B drifter project which mimics the movements of a person in the water, with or without a life jacket.

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Janine Branje, whose daughter, Emily drowned while white baiting on the West Coast, hopes the device created in her daughter’s memory will save lives.

It is thrown in at the location as soon as possible after the person was last seen and sends its location to searchers in real time via satellite GPS for up to four days.

The Emily B drifter, seen here being trialled by the Kotoku Surf Life Saving club, will help rescuers track people missing at sea.

Using the $18,000 raised from a Givealittle page set up in the aftermath of Emily’s death, the family teamed up with the West Coast’s Kotoku Surf Life Saving to create equipment which will help find and recover missing people from the sea.

Emily’s father Patrick, who is a mechanical engineer, designed and fabricated several prototypes which are being trialled by surf lifesavers on the West Coast.

The family hope it will help prevent further drownings and save families from an agonising wait to get their loved ones' bodies back from the sea.

Branje’s mother Janine said after the worst year of their lives the family wanted to use Emily’s memory to help other people.

Branje said she would be “forever grateful” for getting her only child’s body back.

”I remember at the time being really relieved that she was found. The worst part of everything, other than hearing that she was missing, was the waiting and I’m pretty sure I can speak for everyone in the family, that it was awful while we waited. We were really fortunate and lucky to get her back.

“The purpose is that down the track, and sadly it will happen, it minimises the time that people go without their loved ones because for us that was absolutely awful.”

Branje said the family wanted to use the Givealittle fund to give back to the West Coast community that came out in force to look for Emily and support the family.

Kotoku vice chairman Paul Lambert said it would help searchers significantly narrow down a potentially vast search area.

“Nobody else in New Zealand has done live GPS tracking. The thing about the West Coast is heavy rainfall and big rivers. This will help us understand the flow around big rivers, currents, swells, waves, speed, direction. It’s massive,” he said.

Researchers from University of Auckland and Canterbury University would use data collected from trials to create a better understanding of sea conditions off the rugged West Coast coastlines.

Janine Branje wanted to promote water safety ahead of the West Coast whitebaiting season kicking off on Tuesday.

“My biggest message is it doesn’t take much to make sure your children are supervised. Make sure that they have life jackets on even if they are playing [on the shore]. In the blink of an eye everything can change just so, so quickly and it will change your life forever, and it has. It has changed our lives so much.”

Emily was a “determined wee soul” who was passionate about highland dancing and fencing.

“She was very outspoken. She had a zest for life…She loved exploring she loved adventure. And she certainly would have loved this project. She was big on technology and development so the fact that we’ve got involved in this is just so her…She was thriving on life. It’s such a waste, such a waste of a life.”