The waters of the Mar Menor concentrate 86% of deaths by drowning after the closure of summer holidays. 71% of the deceased overcome the barrier of 70 years.
Placing the deaths by drowning registered in the Region in 2018 indicates in red a very specific point of Murcia’s geography. Of the seven deaths for this reason that took place in aquatic spaces of the Community, six occurred in the waters of the Mar Menor, 86%, as reflected in the report of drownings of the Royal Salvage and Lifeguard Federation so far this year. The other death, recorded in the Mediterranean, occurred on one of the beaches on the opposite side of the lagoon in La Manga.
Why are the drowning statistics in the Mar Menor area so bulky compared to the rest of the beaches in the Region? The chief coordinator of the Emergency and Civil Protection Service of the City of San Pedro del Pinatar, Vicente Salas, recalls that the lagoon «concentrates a large influx of people belonging to the two largest risk groups: children and the elderly» , although this year there was no regret for the death of any child.
Salas explains that «many elderly people drag pathologies» that can cause problems in the water. «Some are cardiac, have tension or mobility problems and, once they are on the beach, water and sun can help these diseases develop. They die in the water and may be ‘drowned fakes’, but they have actually died in the water for another reason. » Of the total of these deceased so far this year, 71% had already overcome the barrier of 70.
Click on the interactive chart to go through all the cases of 2018:
Prevention and reduction of deaths
Vicente Salas points out that although «we are managing to lower the rate of drowning, it does not depend only on us; is largely in the hands of the user, so we advise older people not to bathe alone and not to be too far from the shore, so that, if they have a problem, another user can tell us and we can meet them as soon as possible » .
The drowned figures so far this year are still very far from the 18 deaths with which the Region closed 2017, the 11 of 2016 or the 19 of 2015. José Ramón Carrasco, general director of Citizen Security and Emergencies, shows his «Satisfaction for the remarkable reduction in the number of deaths», a situation that attributes to «the good work of the personnel deployed by the COPLA Plan, not only because of the effectiveness shown in their interventions, but also because of the informative work that they deploy».