Posted on 07/09/2010 8:16:57 AM PDT by ventanax5
I never knew. Thanks.
This is so true. A few years ago at a pool my son (who’s had swimming lessons) got stuck under a life ring and couldn’t get back up to the surface. At first I thought he was just playing under water, but as I watched from the side of the pool, I realized he was struggling. I was about to kick off my shoes and jump in when the lifeguard finally caught my eye with a look of “should I do something?” I yelled, “YES!” and she dove in and saved him. It was terrifying for both him and me.
Drowning people make a lot of noise, and go down three times.
Waitresses in NYC can afford 3000 sq foot rental apartments.
Police officers often kill 14 people and smash 8 cars in an average working day.
Any computer password can be cracked in less than 10 seconds, if you know what you're doing.
etc.
People take TV for reality and then they walk out their front door and don't function very well in the real world.
A friend of mine drowned a few years back while drinking. The guys he was with swam to shore after the boat overtuned and said he was just gone.
A few months later I talked to the cop who recovered the body and he said that my friend likely slid beneath the water and never came back up or struggled.
Timely post.
Wow. That is scary. I am not afraid of the water but I haven’t been to a water park in about 20 years and will never ever go again. I was in an inner tube and somehow fell through so I was lodged in there. I got bounced under and hit my head very hard on the side of the slide. I could have been knocked unconscious. I hope people watch their children as carefully as you were on that day.
Very frightening description, but true and worth remembering. It’s simply a physical fact that when people are drowning, they can’t call out for help or thrash around; I saw a near-drowning once, and it was like that.
The depictions of childbirth.
Totally unrealistic.
Done it multiple times, unmedicated, but if it were as awful as shown on TV, I’d remain childless.
I have never looked at water the same way since I got Life Guard certed 20 years ago. I’m always scannin.
•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.
Sounds like our economy.
Another example of good content, unreadable blog.
Here, just post it. No need to excerpt, and much more readable here. Kind of imporant information, too.
**************************
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning
by Mario on May 18, 2010
in Boating Safety,Coast Guard,gCaptain
Artículo en Español
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. The 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 experiencing 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 their 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.
I worked as a lifeguard on Lake Michigan for a couple of years.
Faking was pretty easy to spot. The people that were in real trouble always got a really stupid look on their faces - as in “Oh sh$%, I don’t know what to do!”
Thank you for posting an EXCELLENT article. If you have children or grandchildren this is a MUST READ!
I just took the time to log in to say “thank you” for
posting this item. It goes into the 1. safety file and
2. Why TV is bad file. Anent the latter, I recall a
private detective writing (Blye Private Eye, a small
paperback book seen many years ago) that TV fosters
misconceptions at least as bad as this one about the
effects of blunt trauma, especially to the head.
It’s not splashes or flailing you look for. It’s struggle and desperation
I recall around 1982 I “rescued” 2 small kids in a pool, but 3 days apart. In each case, it was in about 4 feet of water and the child was just sinking down silently. What links both events was that their parents had taken their eyes off them for a few minutes...what also links both events was that each child had been using those small “water wing” floatation devices on their arms, but now they weren’t wearing them at the time of the near drowning. All I did was step in the direction of the child and pulled them to the surface. It was really quick and uneventful, when I aided each child. Their parents were certainly surprised that their child was in trouble.
My own kids were also in the pool, so I was actually looking out for all the kids there. I really believe that those water wing things give small children a false sense of security, and the minute they take them off, disaster can occur.
Never read anything that says “must read”. Never.
BS !
The first thing you do, as I remember from MY training, is to strip to your shorts before you go rushing into the water.
ML/NJ
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