LONDON – The UK’s Royal Life Saving Society on May 27 issued warnings on water safety after nine people died in the sea, rivers and lakes during days of record-breaking hot weather.
May 26 saw the records for the hottest day in May broken in England and Wales, with temperatures reaching 35.1 deg C at Kew Gardens near London.
Seven of the nine water-related deaths reported by police in England and Wales since May 24 have involved teenagers or young children.
The RLSS warned that in the UK when air temperatures reach 25 deg C, “there is a fivefold accidental drowning risk” and teenagers and young adults are “proportionately more likely to lose their lives”.
The National Water Safety Forum said May 27 that “periods of hot weather often correlate with a rise in accidental drownings”.
In the UK, inland waterways have accounted for more than half of accidental drowning deaths since 2019, as water there often “stays dangerously cold all year round”, the charity said.
On May 26, a 17-year-old boy drowned in a lake in Cheshire and a 12-year-old boy died after getting into difficulty in a river in Lancashire, police from the regions of north-western England said on May 27.
A teenager’s body was found May 27 in a lake in Hampshire, southern England, local media reported.
These deaths came after four earlier reported deaths from drowning involving teenagers in England since May 24.
In Lincolnshire in north-east England, a 15-year-old boy drowned May 24, police said.
The father of the boy, named as Declan Sawyer, issued a warning to other families about the dangers of children “playing near any rivers and lakes in the hot weather”.
A teenage girl was pronounced dead after being pulled out of water on May 25 at a water park in Warwickshire in central England, police said.
In Yorkshire in the north-east, one boy drowned in a reservoir May 25 and a 13-year-old boy’s body was recovered early on May 26 at a country park, police said.
Two older people also died in water-related incidents during the heatwave.
In Cornwall, a man in his 60s died on May 26 from a cardiac arrest while trying to assist family members in the sea and a 72-year-old woman was pulled from the sea in Wales on May 24 and died at the scene, according to local police. AFP