Thanks to Liliane Spijker, resident of the Marken lighthouse, a drowning person was rescued from the water around three o’clock this afternoon. “He was scratching like a little dog.”
From the kitchen in her lighthouse (nickname Horse of Marken) Liliane Spijker sees a grown man, floundering in the water. She walks to her front door and sees the man in the water a few dozen meters away, together with his friend. One of them sits on a bump of stones in the water, but finds that scary and decides to go back into the lake. “He then started scribbling like a dog,” says Liliane.
“With hands and feet they showed that they came from Syria”
“I immediately gave birth to walk via the beach at the lighthouse. He really wouldn’t have made it otherwise, I’m afraid. The other man might have, because he still swam a little bit. But the other one really couldn’t help himself.”
Liliane then asked for help from other beachgoers in the area. They took the men in their 30s to the public beach, hundreds of meters from her lighthouse. “I walked up to them. They did not speak Dutch. With hands and feet they showed that they came from Syria.”
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Once on the beach, the two turned out to belong to two other young adults. They too were Syrians. Finally, they got on their bikes and drove off.
Dangerous
“This is the first time I’ve experienced this. It’s super dangerous,” says Liliane, who has just recovered from the shock. “If people can’t swim, they shouldn’t go into the lake. Paddling in this weather is possible. That’s no problem at all, but swimming is dangerous. That scratching dog would have drowned otherwise. They have no experience and no idea what water with you can do.”
“This is the first time I’ve experienced this. It’s super dangerous”
Her call is in line with that of Jeffrey Delforge, who works at the Wijk aan Zee rescue brigade. Ten days ago, he already warned that swimming in the lake and the sea is very risky. “Swimming unprepared is dangerous. You can end up in a cold shock, which disrupts your breathing, panics and possibly also ingests water.”