The number of water-related deaths during the UK’s recent heatwave rose to 11 on Wednesday after the bodies of two teenage boys were recovered in Kent and Oxford. One of the boys was a 14-year-old pulled from the River Thames near Donnington Bridge in Oxford at about 5.30pm.
Thames Valley police said his family had been informed and described the death as unexplained but not suspicious. The other boy was recovered from a pond in Swanscombe, Kent, and that death was also not being treated as suspicious.
The rise in the toll came after temperatures climbed to 35.1C at Heathrow and Kew Gardens in west London on Tuesday, underlining how quickly the hot spell has turned deadly around open water. The Royal Life Saving Society UK issued a plea for people to stop and think before getting into the water, while the UK Health Security Agency warned that water-related incidents could increase as the heat continues.
That warning lands against a grim run of deaths in recent days, many involving children and teenagers. Declan Sawyer, 15, died at Swanholme Lakes in Lincoln on Sunday; a 13-year-old boy, understood to be Reco Puttock, died at Leadbeater Dam near Halifax on Monday; a teenage girl was recovered from Kingsbury Water Park in Warwickshire the same day; and a 12-year-old boy, Junior Slater from Clayton-le-Woods, died in the River Ribble in Ribchester, Lancashire, on Tuesday.
There have also been deaths involving older people. A 72-year-old woman died at West Angle Bay beach in Pembrokeshire on Sunday afternoon, while a man in his 60s died after entering the sea at Tregirls Beach near Padstow to help two family members in difficulty. In Cornwall and Wales, a man in his 60s and a woman in her 70s also died in recent days, showing the risk has reached far beyond one age group or one stretch of coastline.
The difficult part for investigators and safety officials is that these deaths are being treated as not suspicious, even as the heatwave keeps driving more people into rivers, lakes and beaches. Cheshire police said on Wednesday that the body of a 17-year-old boy had been found after he went missing in Pickmere Lake in Marston, Northwich, adding to a list that now stretches across England and Wales.
The hot weather is expected to continue in the coming days before easing over the weekend, and the yellow heat health alert for eastern and south-east England and London runs from 4pm on Thursday until 8pm on Saturday. With that window still open, the clearest message from the latest deaths is simple: the danger has not passed yet.
