Weaver Shell | Valencia (EFE) In addition to respecting the color of the flag, drones are already an ally to reinforce rescue teams and prevent drowning.
From the Red Cross of the Valencian Community, the regional head of Aid and Emergencies, Javier Gandía, explains to EFE that drownings occur, in many cases, due to ignoring when the red or yellow flag is waved and to the warnings of the lifeguards, but also due to “overconfidence” when considering that there is no danger at sea, when there could be.
The use of drones has proven effective in preventing drowning and two Valencians, Adrián Plazas and Francisco Fernández, in charge of the General Drones company, based in Puerto de Sagunto, have been pioneers worldwide in the manufacture of drones specifically designed for carry out rescue and emergency tasks on the beaches.
232 drownings in four years in the Community
According to data from the Spanish Federation of Rescue and Lifeguards (FESS), in the last four years -between 2019 and 2022- 232 people have died from drowning in aquatic spaces in the Valencian Community, which since 2019 has led the numbers of drowning at the national level .
Thus, in 2019, 440 people died in Spain, of which 61 did so in aquatic spaces in the Valencian Community; in 2020 there were 61 deaths in the Community of the total of 338 in the country; in 2021 there were 260 in Spain, 43 of them in the Community; and in 2022 there were 67 deaths in Valencian swimming pools and beaches, 394 at the state level.
In the first six months of this year, according to the latest data published by the FESS, 169 people have drowned in Spanish aquatic areas, 13 of them in the Valencian Community.
However, only in the last week of this month of July there have been eight drowning deaths in swimming pools and beaches in the three provinces, six of them in a single weekend, the majority of people over 65 years of age.
drones that save lives
General Drones has a fleet of thirty aircraft: each one weighs ten kilos and has a flight autonomy of 25 minutes, is protected against the elements of humidity and saltpeter and can operate with winds of up to 50 km/h, controls the capacity of the coast, guarantees the safety of the beaches and carries out rescue tasks.
Thus, from the moment a warning is received, the drone located next to the jet ski takes off in five seconds, with the instructions of the tower’s lifeguard, it goes to the place where the person in danger is, it lands on top of it. of it and releases a float that swells in contact with the water, allowing it to continue breathing until the jet ski arrives and shortening the response time.
“In the world of rescue and lifeguarding on beaches, there has not been any great progress beyond putting jet skis and now drones are a very important tool to reinforce rescue teams,” Adrián Plazas told EFE. who remembers that together with Francisco Fernández he decided to carry out this initiative when they were both lifeguards and in an intervention a woman died for not arriving on time.
Only last year they carried out services on twenty beaches, where they carried out more than 3,000 operations and attended more than 200 emergencies, seven of them “critical rescues” that allowed the lives of those affected to be saved, although this year, due to changes of government in different municipalities, they will only do so on the beaches of Sagunto.
Bathing in guarded areas
The regional head of Aid and Emergencies of the Red Cross in the Community warns of the importance of not going to the beach in the hours when the temperatures are higher because you can suffer a heat stroke, or bathing right after having Eaten. He remembers that there are also deaths in the sand, and not in the sheet of water, due to cardiorespiratory arrest.
Javier Gandía advises bathing in areas of the beach with surveillance, identifying attention points and respecting what the color of the flag marks, since more people drown when there is a red flag than when there is a yellow and green one. “The fact of not paying attention to the instructions of the lifeguards or to the flags” produces more drownings, he insists.
He advocates for regulations that regulate and guarantee the safety of people and that there is a standardization of services and resources dimensioned in each of the municipalities based on the risk that their beaches have.
The head of the Red Cross, whose members are currently on twenty beaches in eight municipalities, six from Valencia and two from Alicante, also stresses the importance of bathers “helping the lifeguard and facilitating their intervention.”