However, we are no longer surprised by these episodes of Indian summer two months before Christmas. In Lacanau, the mayor decided to vote for an additional budget to ensure surveillance of the beach during All Saints' Day, as climate change prolongs heat sequences well beyond summer. “There are more and more activities on the beaches out of season and therefore, more and more people in the water,” repeats Peyrondet.
Surfers on the front line
Arming the surveillance posts from the earliest to the latest is a costly choice: the surveillance device – every weekend from mid-April until October, and every day at Easter and All Saints' Day , not to mention the summer with the reinforcement of the CRS – represents 600,000 euros for the Médoc commune. The only one to make this choice, with Montalivet, in fact. On the ocean front of the Arcachon basin, there has been no surveillance system since the beginning of September, and almost everywhere else, it is often the surfers who are on the front line.
Question of money, therefore, but also of recruitment. “The rescuers are often students, or people who do this during their vacations,” said Philippe de Gonneville, the mayor of Lège-Cap-Ferret last summer. He mobilizes surf club volunteers from mid-April then throughout September, on weekends and “certain risky days”. But stretching out to the edge of winter is too much. And given the general financial context, few people are trying to revive an old debate, when coastal elected officials asked – in vain – the Department and the Region to contribute to the financial effort of beach surveillance. After all, swimmers to watch out for come from everywhere.
