Dénia prepares to open its beaches As of June 1, the day on which the city, like the rest of the Valencian Community, is scheduled to go to phase 2 de-escalation. Accessibility measures, cleaning, surveillance, first aid, information but, above all, measures to guarantee the safety of users, the main objective of the city council. In the words of the mayor, Vicent Grimalt"We will try to make this summer as normal as possible and we want the people who visit us to see us as a safe municipality, in which all the measures set by the central and regional governments will be enforced." In this, the nearly 20 kilometers of beach available to the city are, in turn, an advantage and a disadvantage. Having so much beach area is a plus for favoring interpersonal distance and avoiding crowds. On the other side of the coin, surveillance and control tasks are made more complicated by the amount of space to be covered.
The departments of Beaches and Citizen Protection work together to ensure that this return to normal life on beaches is done with the best possible security guarantees.
As explained by the Beaches councilor, Pepe Doménech, the department has worked "by piece" since last January to return the beaches to the good condition they enjoyed before the storms of September 2019 and the passage of the stormy glory at the beginning of this year. The Provincial Directorate of Coasts also collaborates repairing sections of the area of Les Rotes and, shortly, they will go to the beach of Deveses.
To these conditioning tasks will be added the first measures adopted by the City Council of Dénia to open the beaches of the municipality to the public during the summer. Currently, work is being done on adapting the 26 accesses with a walkway that the city council will enable to enter and exit the beaches with the largest influx of people, such as Punta del Raset, Marineta Cassiana or Deveses.
Once at the beach, informative panels will guide on the three areas into which the surface is to be divided and the uses of each of them. The so-called "active zone", a strip parallel to the seashore and closest to it, will be used for the walk and will have a width of approximately 5 meters to guarantee the interpersonal safety distance. Then, always parallel to the shore, the "rest area", to place towels, hammocks or umbrellas and, finally, the so-called "shelter area", the one where play and sports will be allowed. These two strips will have a variable width depending on the morphology of each beach. Each area will be well delimited by some grooves in the sand that the concessionary company for beach cleaning will mark and review daily.
In the case of Les Rotes, a rocky beach, this delimitation of uses is not feasible, so the study of capacity of the city beaches to be carried out by the city council will be especially useful when allocating protection measures which will materialize shortly.
The cleanliness of the beaches will also be reinforced. The sand on the busiest beaches will have to be aerated with a mechanical screen more frequently and the access walkways will be disinfected twice a day. The footbaths will be kept sealed for prevention. Game elements such as pyramids or volleyball nets will not be available at the moment.
As for the beaches accessible to people with functional diversity, Councilor Pepe Doménech has stated that all the infrastructure will be installed and will be ready to provide service on July 1, as every year, "although we must wait for the measures of the Ministry of Health to know if they can be used normally or we will have to implement, for example, the previous appointment to avoid crowds and order the use of amphibious chairs. "
The security and cleaning measures will be completed with an information and awareness campaign among beach users that will be carried out by 12 Red Cross volunteers. These "awareness agents" will be distributed on the beaches of Dénia daily, from June 20 to August 31, in the morning and afternoon, distributing informative brochures on safety and hygiene measures, recommendations for the use of the beaches and a map showing the 26 main accesses to the beaches. Two employees of the beach cleaning concessionaire, Pavasal, will reinforce this informative task. In addition, the city council will install two information points in the Marineta Cassiana and in Punta del Raset to complete this work of information and public awareness.
Surveillance and first aid on the beaches will be covered by 62 first responders from the Dénia Red Cross, the service's concessionaire. This year a specific item of 10.000 euros will be allocated for the acquisition of personal protective equipment and specific materials so that first responders can carry out their work with guarantees. These will increase the frequency of their walks on the beach, between posts and posts, to also monitor if there is saturation of people in some section and report it to the awareness agents. The surveillance and lifeguard service will be provided daily from June 20 to September 27. In the months of June and September, the hours will be from 10.30:19 a.m. to 11.30:20 p.m. and in July and August, from XNUMX:XNUMX a.m. to XNUMX:XNUMX p.m.
During the first weeks of June, and until the surveillance by the Red Cross begins, volunteer Civil Protection personnel, during the week, and the Local Police, on weekends, will be in charge of monitoring the beaches with the largest influx of the municipality.
As for beach bars and other beach services, such as skates or umbrellas and hammocks, the councilor noted that the only beach bar awarded so far is that of Marineta Cassiana. The award of the rest of the beach bars and other services is finalized in the town hall in the absence of knowing if the ministry decides to authorize this type of activities to make it definitive. The beaconing of the beaches will be carried out from next week.
Police surveillance on the beaches will add to their usual tasks special attention to monitoring the flow of people on the beaches and maintaining the interpersonal safety distance, said the Councilor for Citizen Protection, Javier Scotto. The Drone Unit will carry out capacity checks from the air and will reinforce the information campaign by spreading recorded messages.
The Local Police boat will take care of controlling, especially, the active area, the one closest to the shore, complementing the work of the lifeguards. The quads with which the police patrol the beaches each summer will serve as a punctual reinforcement for the staff of informants.
