Sort of on-topic.

See: http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-01012004-220218.html
and

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/113-01022004-220534.html

We get a dispatch out of our coverage area to assist another station about noon Wednesday (New Year's Eve) - Marine Rescue, Lake Nockamixon. Along with our fire & rescue company, I hear about 8 other marine rescue companies dispatched to the same location. On arival, we have several helos in the air, boats launching into the 1400 acre lake and I find out we're looking for two hispanic men, missing at least 24 hours.

That morning, our Fire dept captain (who works at the state park where the lake is) saw their Coleman RAM-X 15 Canoe capsized and washed up on the shore and called for S&R.

My boat is assigned shoreline search, we head out and cover about 2 miles of shoreline and turn up nothing - no paddles, no seat cushions, no life vests. Meanwhile, another boat locates a duck blind and some duck decoys in the water about 30 yards off shore. On the ground near the blind are several dead ducks, entrails from some of the ducks, shotguns and some other items. So now we have a location where they were, and we move our primary search to the area around the duck decoys, while continuing shoreline search, and adding land search crews. I work a boat with underwarer cameras and also shuttle divers & equipment out to the search location. Darkness comes, command calls us in, we've found nothing. We re-group in the morning on New Year's day and now there's even more searchers. We have dive teams from Philadelphia (40 miles to the south) and Allentown (40 miles to the north). We have many dog teams, we have over two dozen divers, underwater cameras, a helicopter, a hovercraft and many, many marine rescue boats. There's news crews on the shore and in the air, we're running low on gas and diesel, and still, nothing. Finally, in the afternoon, a marine unit finds a dry-bag washed up on shore about a mile from where the boat was found, it's got some clothes in it. The dogs make a positive ID and they bring the bag in to command.

The divers are searching in zero visibility, the water is between 37 and 40 degrees, and ranges in depth from 2 feet to 45 feet in the search area. I leave at 2:30 PM, the search continues on the water until sunset, and some dog teams work through the night. Today (Friday) we took a day off, but we're going out again tomorrow.

Now, we DO know that it was their first time in a Canoe, and we know that they have never hunted from a Canoe before.

The rest of this is all speculation, but the scenario we're seeing is:
One of them went out in the canoe to collect decoys. Falls in. Either panics, gets cold, or sinks. Friend sees what happened, goes to swim in to help - it's "only" 30 yards out. Perhaps they both went out. Family members claim they were "good swimmers" and perhaps they thought they were, but 3 minutes in 37 degree water, probobly with a heavy coat & boots on, nobody's swimming 30 yards.

And yet - yet - with a $20 K-mart life vest just about anyone could have made it to shore under those conditions - maybe cold, maybe some hypothemia, but alive. $20 to save a life. I just can't imagine going out on a winter day, over water, without at least a PFD. Hell, I was wearing a full-body immersion suit just for the shoreline search. Amazing, really.

They are going back to the lake in the morning, I don't know if they will call us in again, maybe they will.

Just letting off some steam here.

In response to a private message asking for a follow up - yes, they turned up dead. There were over 7,000 man-hours into this search. After my last post, we searched a few more days, I drove a boat with a search dog & handler for several hours a day, finally, the dog was going nuts as we went over the spot where they were eventually found, however, visibility was too poor, and despite more days of diving, the bodies were not located. Finally,they were found after a side-scan sonar system was brought in from Virginia. One body was retrieved by divers on a Monday, the next day the next body was found 30 feet away from where the first was recovered and it too was retrieved. Neither of the men were wearing PFD's (obviously). For more on this incident, see:

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&am...tnG=Search+News

One news article from your links says the coroner described their deaths as accidental. I know that's technically correct, but it doesn't do it justice. Accidental usually implies something beyond one's control. This sad situation could have been easily been avoided. Perhaps coroners should adopt a new term that's more descriptive, like Died due to Darwinism." Although that would be cruel to the victem's relatives who have already suffered much through their lose. How sad. <img src="images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

BTW, none of the news stories make mention that they were not wearing PFDs. Here's a chance for journalist to provide truly valuable information and they didn't.

How about stupi-cidal instead of suicidal?

In the last 35 days, I've been involved in four incidents that resulted in the death of someone, one incident where a guy blew the side of his head out with a pistol (he's still "alive" in the sense that he's breathing and his heart is going) and another case where an elderly woman sufferered serious burns in a house fire. In all of these cases (especially in two of them where the patients literally died in my arms) I have had first-hand knowledge of the incident, what happened, when and how it happed, becasue I was THERE. In ALL cases, the newspapers have missed CRUCIAL facts relevant to the story - as crucial as the two boaters not wearing PFD's as crucial as a driver being drunk with a .26 BAC and having no seatbelt on, as crucial as a home having a damaged unmaintained chimmney. These FACTS are important, because these FACTS inform others who might get into their situation.
Quite frankly, the two dead guys - well, it was sad, yes, but damn near inevitable.

OK, I have to sound off here: As a former journalist, we generally only know what the incident responders choose to tell us regarding a specific incident, i.e., what is in the reports, since these are generally public records and are reviewed regularly by reporters. IF we can find them, or IF they return our calls, we will try to talk with one of the people who was actually on the scene, if we were not there ourselves, but as I’m sure most of you first responders are aware, questioning journalists are right up there with pond scum in who you want to deal with or talk to.

That said, there is nothing wrong with using one of these tragedies as a “hook” to try and get a reporter interested in doing a story about, for example, damaged chimneys and the dangers they pose, or how dumb it is to go out onto any body of water without a PFD. Most reporters these days are trying to cover too much, with too few resources, and ever-smaller space for news as papers/TV increase the space/time devoted to ads (which produce $$$). I’m sure that sounds familiar.

Reporters are pretty much like other people – if you make their job easier by suggesting a story and a recent example, most of them will be happy to oblige and write a story that may, just may, save someone’s life.

Excellent points - thanks for bringing in the journalist's perspective. (My younger brother was a newspaper reporter and editor for a chain of small-town newspapers for many years, and it really is a thankless job - he was putting in over 10 hours of *unpaid* overtime a week, always had to go in to the office on Sunday and usually Saturday as well, and was going through a bottle of Maalox a week.)

I used to think that newspaper reporters would be doing a great service if they simply included whether or not someone killed in a car accident had been wearing a seat-belt or not. Then, some years ago, I noticed that it was becoming routine for this information to be included in reports of traffic accidents where there had been injury or death. I suspect it had nothing to do with the reporters or the newspaper's policy, and likely everything to do with the information that was being officially released by the authorities.