Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Conditions on the beach were fairly typical, as the BBC's Jon Kay reports 
 
 Two men and a woman have died after getting into difficulty in the sea off a beach in Cornwall. Two men and a woman were caught in a rip current off Mawgan Porth beach near Newquay at around 1.30pm on Sunday. Two of the three recovered from the water were given CPR at the scene before they were airlifted to hospital. The dead included a man in his 50s from outside the Devon and Cornwall area and a man and woman in their 40s from Cornwall, police said. After the alarm was raised, a search was launched involving Newquay and Padstow Coastguard rescue teams, RNLI lifeboats and a Royal Navy helicopter from RNAS Culdrose. They were transferred to the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro by the navy helicopter and Devon and Cornwall's air ambulances but pronounced dead in hospital. The manager of the nearby Merrymoor Inn, said the children, whom he described as "teenagers", were taken to the pub by police after the incident. Peter Abell, owner of the nearby Kingsurf surfing school - which was not involved in the incident - said sea conditions on Sunday were "not as bad as it can be", but added some currents were "slightly more dangerous than usual". He said: "The waves were bigger, they were quite big. It wasn't the safest of days to be in the sea but it wasn't particularly dangerous. There were lots of safe places to be and they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 
 
 Abell, 30, said beaches were always changing, adding: “You can never predict this.” 
 
 Describing the scene as emergency services started to arrive, Abell said: “I’ve never seen so many police cars and coastguards arrive at the beach before. Image copyright Lucy Higgins Image caption Coastguards received "multiple 999 calls" when the group got into trouble 
 
 Supt Jim Pearce, of Devon and Cornwall Police, said: "This is a tragic incident and our condolences go out to the families of those involved. Along with the other emergency services we are now working to ascertain the full circumstances of this incident and our priority is to contact the families of those involved and offer all the support we can.” 
 
 Locals said there were rough seas along the coast on Sunday afternoon. Rip currents 
 
 Sometimes wrongly referred to as rip tides, rip currents are strong, localised and narrow currents of water 
 
 They move directly away from the shore and cut through the lines of breaking waves 
 
 The RNLI has said they can be major problem for surfers, swimmers and bodyboarders, dragging them out of safe depths 
 
 People who do not have the necessary water skills can be placed at risk in a rip current if they panic or exhaust themselves swimming directly against the flow 
 
 Source: Press Association and RNLI
– Surf tragedy in Britain: Three people died after being caught in a rip current off a beach in Cornwall yesterday. Police say a man and woman in their 40s and a man in his 50s died after they were pulled unconscious from the water and airlifted to the hospital, reports the BBC. Four children in the same group were saved. An emergency services worker describes conditions at the popular Mawgan Porth as "dangerous" and says one of the casualties entered the water to assist others who were struggling. The owner of a nearby surf school tells the Guardian that while the currents may have been slightly more dangerous than usual, he has seen far worse conditions. "The waves were bigger, they were quite big. And it wasn't the safest of days to be in the sea," he says. "But it wasn't particularly dangerous. There were lots of safe places to be and they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time." (In California earlier this month, surfers were in the right place at the right time to rescue a couple whose romantic hot-air-balloon ride had gone awry.)