Just because it’s too cold for most people to swim in the Isar at the moment doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t prepare for the upcoming bathing season on the Flaucher. At the Wasserwacht local group in Munich-Mitte, they are even thinking well beyond the summer of 2022. To ensure that there are enough Isarretters in the future, as the members of the group proudly call themselves, they want to train their offspring for future assignments over the long term.
At the moment, however, the necessary equipment is missing – and the money to procure it. That’s why they decided on a crowdfunding project: On the website www.viele-schaffen-mehr.de/projekte/neoprenanzuege-fuer-die-jugend, the Isarretters want to win over potential financiers for their cause.
The call for donations was started in December, and so far 680 euros have been received from 16 supporters. However, the goal is 5000 euros, with which 20 neoprene suits and protective vests in different children’s and youth sizes should be purchased. In the two years of the corona pandemic, the work with young people in particular suffered, explains Michael Greiner, spokesman for the Isarretter. That’s why she should be pushed again: “We want to make the training in the Isar safer and more pleasant for our young people.”
Around 80 young people between the ages of ten and 16 are currently active in the Munich-Mitte local group, and of course they should also practice lifeguarding. The wetsuits are primarily intended to prevent cooling down in the cold river. The younger and smaller ones still have to slip into suits that are much too large for this: the little arms often slouch in sleeves that are far too long, the trouser legs have to be gathered at knee height so that the feet underneath can even look out. And the collar often reaches to the tip of the nose. Not everyone has the patience to wait long enough to grow into the suits.
The young water guards are needed as future lifeguards. Especially at the Marienklause, where the Isarretters store their equipment in a station, there are always life-threatening situations when the river has a higher water level than usual. The voluntary members of the Munich-Mitte local group are not always on hand, because they only watch over the safety of the bathers in the popular Isar meadows during the summer months on weekends and public holidays. But they still often provide first aid: 80 times in the summer of 2021 alone, nine patients even had to be taken to the hospital. For once, they didn’t have to rescue anyone from the water in 2021, but that’s not the rule: in 2020, they were deployed 20 times to fish someone out of the stream.