Twice as many lost children by the sea
In Ostend most people got lost on the beach: 444. There is now also a central reception point on the beach to take in lost children. The city also uses pictograms for non-native speakers and deploys the beach team to hand out stray bracelets.
“It’s getting out of hand”
“The month of July is ticking at 879 lost people, especially children,” says An Beun. The chief rescuer of Ostend, Levy Meyer, agrees. In his city there were already 444 lost children in July: “This summer it is really getting out of hand. We notice that we can’t handle it anymore. We are too busy looking for those children. We don’t have time anymore to pass on other reports because we are constantly looking for children. In the past, the first aid posts were overloaded with children so that they were no longer mobile themselves. When people fainted we could no longer deploy these people because it was full with children. And that is really not possible anymore.”
More now than all last summer
An Beun picks up. “This is almost twice as much as last year in the same period and already more than the total figure for last summer. The beautiful summer weather naturally attracted a lot of people to our Flemish coast and that is clearly reflected in the figures. In 2021 we recorded in July 462 people who lost their way for a while, in 2020 there were 389 and in 2019 560. Only in 2018 was it even more dramatic: then 1100 people were lost in the first month of the summer holidays.”
“However, just like last summer, IKWV makes 750,000 free wristbands available. These can be obtained from lifeguards, first aid posts, public toilets, tourist offices, bath cart owners and a lot of merchants on the coast”.
Mopping with the tap open
“The figures of the lost children are extremely high and this puts extra pressure on the beach rescuers. IKWV therefore also sounded the alarm. She also received the same signal from various other emergency services: everyone is over questioned,” says An Beun.
“However, the problem of lost children should not be a problem”, sighs chairman Bert Gunst.
“If the parents or supervisors of children keep a proper eye on their offspring or at least put on a free stray wristband, a lot of misery could be avoided.”
The priority of the rescuers at sea is of course with the bathers and water sports enthusiasts, as well as with tourists who become unwell or hurt themselves on the beach. When their attention is always pulled away from these tasks because, for the umpteenth time, she was a panicking parent or If you have to take care of a lost child, this can of course create unsafe situations.
“We therefore call on all tourists with children to pay extra attention to this and not to lose sight of the basic rules,” says Gunst.