Can you swim? Six kids in Louisiana couldn't.

I learned to swim when I was four.

 

I was reading through the entire thread to see if this was addressed.

Glad you mentioned it, pern, but disappointed it took this far down. Six kids dying is no place for a flippant title.

Not saying I'm offended or that Gomer is a bad person, but a little more sensitivity most definitely is called for.

 

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/08/time_to_sink_or_graduate/

MIT requires a swim test to graduate. I would have failed. I took lessons as a kid, but I did not want to put my face in the water, so I never made it very far. And nothing was more embarrassing than being a 12-year-old taking swim lessons with kids who were barely potty-trained. I just stay away from water now except for drinking it and taking showers. Even now, I don't like getting my face wet when taking a shower. My SO knows how to swim - he worked on a boat as a teenager and spent his summers on a beach - so I tell him that when we have kids, he can take them to swim lessons and pool parties. I'll handle non-water-related events.

And this is just another reason I'm glad I didn't attend MIT.

 

Thing is, a lot of time it's not the fact they couldn't or can't swim. It's that panic immediately sets in and they don't think to "swim" or "doggie paddle."

They panic. They sink.

If you've never learned or been taught how, being asked to do so unexpectedly in 20-foot depths probably isn't the best time to learn.

 

If you're over 5, you should be able to swim. Tom Mees and these six kids could have benefited from a few lessons. So could Joe Delaney and that USC recruit from a couple years ago.

It's a really sad story, but why would anyone who can't swim go anywhere near the water.

 

SEC, sometimes you don't have a choice.

Mees and Delaney are a perfect examples of that.

 

For decades, Georgia Tech had a class called Drownproofing that was mandatory for graduation. I consider myself a good swimmer, but no way could I do all this.

 

Another nod of agreement. Our town is on the Mississippi River. Lots of people canoe down it, take homemade rafts down it, whatever, but if they fall in they probably won't make it out. There's the current, whirlpools, floating logs, river traffic -- it's a death trap. When somebody does fall in, they usually find the body seven or eight miles downriver.

 

"Drownproofing" reminds me of an old headline from our neck of the woods. There's a town near hear called Waterproof, La., and someone fell in a lake and died.
The headline was "Waterproof negro drowns in lake"

 

I've known how to swim since elementary school, but floating was another matter -- I sank like a stone as a teen. Of course I was athletic, rail thin and my body fat was extremely low then, so buoyancy was a challenge.

 

That is fascinating.

Treading water for an hour? Wow. Look at 'c'.

Either this was some sort of Ironman-type competition, or they grew 'em tougher back in the day.

 

from a site called gcaptain.com
(as usual, tv does not represent reality)


The new captain jumped from the cockpit, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the owners who were swimming between their anchored sportfisher and the beach. “I think he thinks you’re drowning,” the husband said to his wife. They had been splashing each other and she had screamed but now they were just standing, neck-deep on the sand bar. “We’re fine, what is he doing?” she asked, a little annoyed. “We’re fine!” the husband yelled, waving him off, but his captain kept swimming hard. ”Move!” he barked as he sprinted between the stunned owners. Directly behind them, not ten feet away, their nine-year-old daughter was drowning. Safely above the surface in the arms of the captain, she burst into tears, “Daddy!”

How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC). Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1. Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2. Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3. Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4. Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5. From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experience aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in there own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are n the water:

* Head low in the water, mouth at water level
* Head tilted back with mouth open
* Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
* Eyes closed
* Hair over forehead or eyes
* Not using legs – Vertical
* Hyperventilating or gasping
* Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
* Trying to roll over on the back
* Ladder climb, rarely out of the water.

So if a crew member falls overboard and every looks O.K. – don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

If you have any questions at all – please post them in the gCaptain forums under “maritime safety”

disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.