The fatalities occured in a lake in Balvi and a pond in Liepāja and came just one day after President Egils Levits called for members of the public to take more care on, in and around water, as previously reported by LSM.
The VUGD has now pulled 72 bodies from the water this year, compared to 96 for the whole of 2019. The actual number of drownings is higher as the presence of the VUGD is not always required if bodies have been recovered by other means. The VUGD recently launched an ad campaign of its own urging the public to be more responsible.
The Baltic states have an unenviable record when it comes to drownings, with Estonia's ERR News reporting that the number of drownings this year in our northern neighbor already exceeds the total for the whole of 2020.
