Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

Interesting article: Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning by M. Vittone. Though I swim, dive, and sail, I never knew this. Guess I can add this bit of knowledge to my preparation.


Da Bing

Thanks for posting this. Good article, especially appropriate as we approach summer.

We nearly lost a kid at a b-day party last year because of exactly this. it's silent.

We nearly lost a kid at a b-day party last year because of exactly this. It's silent. It's easy not to notice. Almost happened to DS at a party once. Took him 3 years to have enough confidence to enjoy the water agsin and I'm not fully over it yet. Now, when I'm responsible for kids - any kids - someone I trust is ALWAYS on dry land with sharp eyes on the water at all times. Same goes for grown non-swimmers.

I never knew that, thanks.

Wow, thanks for the superb information. It could save some lives.

There's also the delayed drowning, which can kill up to several hours after the victim has reached dry land.

Which is technically near drowning that is left untreated or the treatment is unsuccessful.

From wikipedia (dry drowning, as it's also called):
"When water or other foreign bodies are inhaled, laryngospasm occurs and the person's larynx spasms shut. As a result, the vacuum created by the diaphragm cannot be filled by the inrush of air into the lungs, and the vacuum persists. In an attempt to force air in through the spasmed larynx, the person may breathe deeper and with more effort, but this only increases the vacuum's force inside the chest. The obstruction to the inflow of oxygen causes hypoxia, and the obstruction to the outflow of carbon dioxide causes acidosis, both resulting in death.[1]

In addition, a multifactorial form of pulmonary edema is produced. The heart continues to beat normally during this time, and blood continues to circulate, though pulmonary oxygen and carbon dioxide gas exchange is markedly reduced. The volume of blood in the pulmonary circulation increases, by pulling in more blood from the abdomen, head, arms and legs; abnormally large volumes of this blood enter the pulmonary circulation via the superior and inferior vena cavae (great veins) in response to the persistent partial vacuum. From the vena cavae, the increased blood volume flows through the right atrium and into the right ventricle. The blood volume is great enough to stretch out the ventricle, similar to water entering a balloon."

-jh

also , on the river, if they're floating downstream, they're probably in trouble, so call out for a response


FWIW, maybe I'm misremembering the Baywatch, but the drownings on that show looked real according to this article. Well, except for the obvious "oh save me sexy lifeguard, save me"

Just responded Monday to a drowning. Recovered the body Tuesday.
FNP Story - Drowning

Pete

Almost all my friends have pools. When we have party's w/ the kids present we hire one of the teens to lifeguard. Paying w/ a tip jar. It's a serious job. No playing. Just watching

comms, nice idea.

The only "Instinctive Drowning Response" video on YouTube was pulled by the copyright holder. I emailed them to ask them if they could produce a higher-quality, linkable version of the video that just shows the IDR. I'm hoping they'd be able to. I don't want to ruin their profit, but I just want people to recognize when something is terribly wrong!

Used to be a lifeguard years ago, luckily I never had to save anyone. One thing that the article doesn't mention, but it really should, is that people shouldn't swim out and try and grab a drowning person. The drowning person will likely overwhelm the attempted rescuer, and very possibly take both people down.
If you do get in this situation and are in danger of being drowned, swim down and they will let go.

Best thing, is to have a floatation device with a rope, and throw it to/past the person, use the rope to pull it to them. If there isn't one with a rope, swim out with what you have, and keep it between you and the victim. Hand it to them, but don't let them get close enough to you to grab on.

Thanks for link and it is good reminder for all.

I swim lengths at a local and very busy multi-purpose pool 2-3 times per week. I have seen a couple of close calls usually with younger children that their parents are not paying too much attention to. Although there are lifeguards on duty, they cannot always see everything at every second. As mentioned, drowning often doesn't look like drowning and it can happen so fast that most people will not realize what is happening until it is almost too late....or sadly when it is too late.

I almost drowned when I was about 7 years old. I didn't know how to swim at the time. I fell in the pool, at about seven feet deep. In retrospect, I guess my response was atypical because I went berserk, clawing and making all kinds of commotion to get out of there. Luckily, I was able to latch onto the side of the pool somehow. Nobody was in the backyard. It was one of those "life flashing before my eyes" moments.

thanks bing, pasing this on to as many friends and family as possible, many of whom have young kids and pools.

When I was six, I pulled my brother from the pool. Two random guys did CPR til the ambulance came. Surprisingly my brother is fine.

I guess the moral is, sometimes having people there doesn't help either - good thing you self-rescued!

I should add that today I'm an above average swimmer who respects, but does not fear, water!

Just stumbled over this web page last night and is relevant to this thread and discussion. 14 things your lifeguard might not tell you. When I was at the pool this morning, I was thinking about the article and made me much more aware of what the lifeguards were doing...and not doing.

The last time I went to a major waterpark I saw several of the teenage lifeguards constantly texting on their cell phones while obviously trying to hide the activity from their supervisors.

That's a "I'm outta here and you will refund my money instantly" offense if I've ever seen one. I've never seen an on-duty lifeguard in possession of electronics at any water park I've been to, walkie-talkies excepted.

Truly. Asolutely unacceptable!! If your eyes are supposed to be on the water, there's no excuse for them to be anywhere else. There aren't a lot of things that I'd make a fusd over but that would definitely be one of them - a BIG freakin' hairy deal!.

After reading that, my philosophy will be to employ my own lifeguard for my group. That would be me or some other capable swimmer in my group. If I made a stink about everything on that list, I can only think of ONE public pool that comes close to being halfway OK.

When I was about 10-years-old, we'd jump off bridges into slow moving rivers in Yosemite. My brother (12) was the designated lifeguard. Nobody wore suitable trunks. Whatever was deep down in the water, nobody knew. Today, I'd be scared out of my mind to allow my kid do what we did.

Good info, by the way it was posted here about one year ago ( http://forums.equipped.org/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=205385
) I'm not saying this thread is redundant though, the opposite is true. This is too important info to be lost in the archive of the forum.

I've witnessed a quite opposite situation once (the later recollection of things happened). A small group of teenage and smaller kids from one family were playing in the lake and were behaving extremely laud. Fooling around like jumping up and down in the shallow water with their hands up and screaming like crazy, including a drowning imitation play. People on the beach were kind of trying to adapt to this noise for an hour or so (we've moved farther from the water with our little baby trying to get a nap). There were no LGs on duty at that evening time. Nobody, even children in the water in close proximity of the drowning boy were understanding that something wrong is going on with one of the older kids, perhaps because his behavior has changed very little when he has started to drown for real, until one of the younger kids came out of the water and told his parents that his cousin has disappeared. When parents started to search for him asking other children and calling his name it was a quiet moment when the boy has managed to jump to the surface for the last time and scream indistinguishably. Then his head disappeared forever. Several men jumped in the water immediately. The boy was only around 50-70 feet from the beach. However, only after about 5 minutes of searching the water one of the men has finally managed to locate the boy and take him to the shore. Someone has called the ambulance. One of the men has immediately started the CPR, but of course it was too late already.

My triathlon team swims a couple times a week at a nearby lake. Its an open invite for the team but we are pretty careful about their skill level to swim at least 500 yards straight. Plus most new people will use a wetsuit for buoyancy. We've moved location a few times to be as accommodating as possible to new open water (OW) swimmers so the route has as many bug outs as possible to shore and no motorized boats.

As there are many people coming into triathlon or need experience with OW, every other weekend we run a much larger group and put as many kayaks in the water as possible to help out. They have to wait for that kayak support weekend if they are nervous but many of us are training for our own races and can't waste our training time by being personal sitters for new swimmers. We have to get our distance in too.

Its about as safe as you can get in OW minus personal responsibility.

Slightly off-topic but still relevant I think, the Province of Ontario has this program, which would be nice to see in all schools:
http://www.lifesavingsociety.com/default.asp?PageId=795

As valuable as the program is, it doesn't eliminate the need for intensely focused eyes on dry land.

I view lifeguards as similar to the Police. They are nice to have around and can certainly be a great help when there's trouble, but they are not personal bodyguards.

When my family is swimming, I'm constantly counting heads, keeping track of my own kids. Lifeguards can't keep track of who's in or out of the water and know when someone is missing.

I've seen guards do a search of the water in a lake swimming area several times, once was a drill and the other was a false alarm. They line up shoulder to shoulder and sweep parallel to the shore line, starting at the shore and working their way out in successive passes. When they reach deep water, they dive, swim along the bottom, back up a bit and repeat. It struck me that unless there was a point last seen to start searching from, the real thing would most likely be a body recovery.