South Korea is experiencing a heat wave. The 43,000 Boy Scouts from all over the world who have gathered on the east coast of the country for the annual global Scouting week are also noticing this. On Wednesday, the first day of this four-yearly World Scout Jamboree, at least four hundred children and adults became unwell due to the heat and were cared for in one of the clinics on the event site, the report said. South Korean media.
Roeland Smit (31) has been on the Saemangeum polder since last weekend, where the event will take place from 2 to 12 August, to help as a volunteer. Certainly during the first days he had to “switch gears physically”. “It is about 36 degrees here, but it is mainly the humidity that prevents your body from cooling down,” he says. “In the first few days you saw quite a few people become unwell from the heat.”
Moreover, in the run-up to the event, when the volunteers were at work, not all drinking water points would have been connected yet. There is also the question of whether there was enough space to cool off on the polder, which naturally has few shaded areas. The opening event of the Jamboree, which included South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and adventurer Bear Grylls, was postponed for a day. When the ceremony took place on Wednesday, things still went wrong. At least a hundred people overheated there.
Bottled water
Scouting volunteer Josse Carstens told NPO Radio 1 that there was only one access road for ambulances, while the cars came “off and on” to remove overheated people. “On the lawn, children and adults were everywhere for pampus, they begged us for water,” says Carstens. “We handed out bottled water there. That was really not fun to do.”
According to Smit, it was mainly the crowds together that caused extra heat during the opening ceremony. “That in combination with too little water and jet lag made an ugly cocktail. The question is what you could have done about it, apart from distributing even more water.” Smit does not know how many members of the Dutch delegation (some 1,900 children and adults) have become unwell. “There were a few cases.”
The South Korean Minister of the Interior and Security ordered the Jamboree on Thursday to take immediate measures against heat accidents. Volunteer Smit says that much has improved since then. “Additional doctors have been sent here, soldiers have been deployed to construct additional infrastructure, additional water taps have been connected. And on long paths with little shade, umbrellas have been set up to relax under.”
Smit, who will be a scout for exactly 21 years next December, will not be too bothered by the weather conditions. “I drink about eight liters of water a day. And in the volunteer tent where I work, a fan was delivered one of the first days. That saves a lot.”
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