A 13-year-old girl and a 38-year-old man died from drowning in the French department of Seine-et-Marne, near Paris, on Sunday evening. The tragic incidents add to the already significant national death toll: at least thirteen drowning deaths have already been recorded across France as of Saturday evening. The French Civil Security Service reported this on Monday.
Journalist at HLN
Source: Le Parisien
A 38-year-old man disappeared underwater on Sunday evening around 8.45 pm after jumping into the Marne to cool off in Lagny-sur-Marne. About twenty firefighters and several diving teams responded immediately. The man was eventually removed from the water and resuscitated, but help was of no help. A doctor diagnosed his death a short time later. According to witnesses, the man was under the influence of alcohol.
Barely fifteen minutes later, the emergency services received a second report in Fontaine-le-Port. There, a 13-year-old girl drowned in the Seine, near a bridge, while she was swimming with her family. According to the family, the girl could not swim.
She allegedly went into the water and then disappeared below the surface. Here too, about twenty firefighters arrived on the scene. The girl was found and resuscitated, but died on the spot. Her 16-year-old brother had jumped into the water himself to try to save her. He became exhausted and was in shock, but was unharmed.
Extreme heat
France is currently experiencing an unprecedented heat wave. Locally the mercury is touching 40 degrees. Code red has been declared in no fewer than 35 departments, which is a record.
On Friday, a 17-year-old boy drowned in the same region in a recreational lake where swimming was prohibited. At the end of May, four people also died by drowning in Seine-et-Marne during an earlier heat wave, three of them in one weekend. They also drowned in areas where swimming was prohibited.
