Despite the din of the A9 in the background, side channel C is relatively quiet again more than a week after the fatal accident. The neighborhood was devastated after the 18-year-old woman died in a watercraft accident. They tell reporters from NH Nieuws that Zijkanaal C, on the border of Velsen-Zuid and Spaarndam, is a popular place for young people with personal watercraft.
Some residents of the houseboats are at home at the time of the fatal accident and have seen some young people playing with watercraft on the water for a while. It arouses some irritation in one of them, but that irritation disappears when it becomes quiet. It is the moment that an 18-year-old Haarlem girl crashes with a water scooter, her friend who was sitting on the back was seriously injured.
‘A big loss’
“It is a drama, terrible,” says Esther Batelaan a day after the accident. The residents of the houseboats quickly find each other when the trauma helicopters and ambulances arrive at the scene of the accident.
The victim of the accident is 18-year-old Adinda from Haarlem. She is sailing, with her friend on the back, presumably against a dukdalf. Dozens of people, including her family and circle of friends commemorate her at the place where it happened. “That was so beautiful, all the people who care about Adinda were together. This is a very big loss. I am really devastated,” tells a friend of Adinda to NH Nieuws.
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The memorial is a few hundred meters away from the row of houseboats. It is well known to local residents that groups of young people often sail with a water scooter on side channel C: “When the weather is nice, they can always be seen here,” says one of them. Despite the fact that you are not allowed to sail faster than 20 km/h on the canal, according to the local residents, they then tear past the houseboats.
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Watercraft often go fast at the accident site – NH Nieuws
“Some adhere very well to the rules, but others sometimes come by at a very high speed,” says Esther Batelaan. Harbor master Frank Segveld also recognizes the picture that is being painted. “We see them pass by regularly, and that has actually been for a number of years. At the boat ramp they go into the water with a trailer and then they sometimes tear along here.”
Warning signs and a boat license?
It is not known whether the victims of the accident last Sunday also went too fast. The police are no longer investigating this.
Local residents do believe that additional measures should be taken after the accident. “I would like to see more regulations for personal watercraft and more warning signs,” says Esther. Harbor master Segveld also has ideas about this: “There has been talk for years about a compulsory sailing license, I am not negative about that.”
In response to questions from NH Nieuws, the police say that nuisance from watercraft on Zijkanaal C is not known to them. The police do say that Adinda’s 23-year-old friend is out of danger.
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