Hundreds of people were cleared from the water at Birds Hill Park beach Wednesday afternoon after a beach safety officer spotted bubbles in the water, a provincial spokesperson said.

STARS Air Ambulance, emergency crews and police were at the beach just before 1 p.m. When the search concluded at 5:30 p.m., provincial officials said everyone was safe.

"We were all swimming and the lifeguards, they started blowing their whistles and telling everybody to get out of the water," said Sydney Pritchard, who was at the beach when it happened. "They all ran into the water, and they started doing a grid search and sweeping the bottom."

A spokesperson for the province said a beach safety officer spotted bubbles but didn't see anyone come up from the water, so the search was initiated.

Pritchard said that at one point about seven or eight lifeguards were searching the water while ambulances, a helicopter and police waited on shore.

Precautionary search of lake at Birds Hill Park underway. Bubbles spotted, but no one reported missing. Checking just to be sure. —@MBGov

"The entire beach right now — there's not a single person in the water other than the lifeguards," she said. "I haven't seen them pull anybody from the water but from what we overheard, somebody went under the water and they didn't see them come back up."

She said a large number of police officers and lifeguards were at the scene.

Pritchard is training to become a lifeguard with the Red Cross with plans to complete her courses by December. She said she comes from a family of lifeguards, and her mom was in the Canadian Coast Guard.

This is the first time she's seen a water emergency, she said.

"Sometimes in the lifeguarding courses it can all seem so, 'Oh this isn't really ever going to happen. I'll just be sitting in a chair,' but this really shows that things really do happen and you have to be prepared and know what you're doing," said Pritchard.