These are the first pictures showing two children – one dead and the other still missing – after their boat capsized during a Father’s Day outing on the Rhine.
The tragedy happened when the boat carrying two brothers and their two nieces capsized near the north-eastern French town of Gerstheim which is in the Bas-Rhin department, on the German border.
They were part of a family group of seven which included five Romanians and two Germans. They live in Germany and had travelled across the border to France for the outing, on 30th May, which is Father’s Day in Germany.
The boat they were travelling in was being used on a section of the Rhine where there is a large hydroelectric plant operated by German company EDF nearby, and where swimming, fishing and any type of water sport is strictly forbidden.
The disaster happened when the electric motor on the boat failed, and it was drawn towards the weir where it capsized.
One of the men in the boat, who has not been named, managed to hold onto a concrete parapet and avoid being sucked under, but the two children and the other man on the boat were lost. He was eventually rescued.
They were named only partially because of local privacy laws as Florin M., 29, and his nieces Ela, 6, and Maria, 4. The other man who died was Florin’s brother, Utu M., 27, who had jumped in from the bank in order to swim to the stricken family and who suffered a heart attack and died.
The bodies of the two dead men and the youngest child have been recovered, but the search is continuing for Ela.
An angler who witnessed what happened said: “The group had the boat in the water and were 400 metres (1,300 feet) from the weir. The two men were sitting in the boat, the two children were standing. Nobody had a life jacket on.”
He said that the group had desperately tried to use the paddles on the boat to move away from the weir but in the end it did not work and the boat capsized.
The regional French rescue service for the Bas-Rhin region in Strasbourg has stated helicopters, divers, police and firefighters were involved in the extensive mission and although the operation has now been downsized, the search is continuing.
Viorel Andrecu, 54, the grandfather of Maria, has said that although Ela was not his own granddaughter, both of them are his grandchildren to him.
He said: “I am devastated. I have lost two of my sons and two granddaughters.”
The two brothers had moved to live in Germany where Florin M. had managed to get a job with another brother who had a construction company in the Black Forest. They were on holiday in France when the accident happened.
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Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
