Yaounde: boy drowns in artificial lake while swimming

Rescue soldiers have resumed search operations this Monday January 30 to retrieve the corpse of a boy who drowned in an artificial lake on the evening of January 28th in Akaka, a village situated along the national road number 1, in outskirts of the city of Yaounde.

Searches carried out on that Saturday evening and Sunday by rescue soldiers alerted went fruitless.

According to friend’s of the drowned boy, they went swimming at a quarry site where the artificial lake was formed from deep craters.
“We went to have fun like we used to on Saturday at about 4pm. Our friend went down in the water and never resurfaced. Scared we swam out thinking he will come out but we couldn’t see him. We had to rush back to inform people who alerted rescue soldiers,” a friend of the victim recounted.

The site where the artificial lake is found is an abandoned quarry by a Chinese company engaged with road construction works. After exploitation for many years, they left without covering the deep craters they created and these were gradually covered by water now serving as a death trap to the locals.

Going by statements of the rescue soldiers, the search operation was quite cumbersome and risky:

“We had to suspend the search on Saturday and Sunday because it was risky down there. We didn’t want to risk lives of the rescue soldiers. It is complicated to know the spot where the boy’s body could be,” the commander of the rescue soldiers explained.

It is hoped today’s search will be fruitful as the search team returns to the quarry site.