Munich/Damp (dpa/lby) - In Bavaria, significantly more people have drowned this year than in the same period last year. As reported by the German Life Saving Society (DLRG) on Thursday, 42 people died while swimming in Bavaria by July. In the first seven months of 2021 it was 29.
As the DLRG reported at the presentation of the 2022 interim balance sheet in the Schleswig-Holstein Baltic Sea resort of Damp, Bavaria is also well ahead of the other federal states in terms of the number of drowned people. This is followed by North Rhine-Westphalia with 30 victims by July and Lower Saxony with 23. Nationwide, 199 people drowned, 15 more than at the same time last year. The DLRG determined the figures as of July 20th.
According to lifeguards, most of the victims are male. Only 8 of the 42 people who drowned in Bavaria were female. Almost half of those who drowned died in a lake (20 cases), 16 people died in the rivers in the Free State.
The President of the DLRG, Ute Vogt, appealed to swimmers not to go into unsupervised lakes and never into rivers because of these numbers. "If something happens there, the prospect of life-saving assistance is often zero," she said.
