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8/4/2010 3:13:44 PM

Quote :

"it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water"

well, not really. it's pretty hard for a lot of people to just float, and easier for them to doggy paddle...unless you're just really really fat.

8/4/2010 3:16:26 PM

We had something similar happen at a summer camp where I worked. A grandfather brought his 3 grandsons out to go swimming on the river nearby and two of them walked out too far and drowned. Neither the grandfather or the other brother could swim well enough to help.

It strikes me as incredibly reckless to take your kids who can't swim to go swimming in a large body of water knowing that if anyone goes out too far you will be absolutely powerless to help them.

8/4/2010 3:16:41 PM

reckless is being kind...it's damn stupid.

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 3:36 PM. Reason : ...]

8/4/2010 3:36:31 PM

My diamonds is reckless

8/4/2010 3:38:26 PM

This is a self-perpetuating tragedy.

People are scared of or wary of the water so they don't learn how to swim or teach their kids how to swim. Then they drown, which makes people more scared of and wary of the water...so people continue not to learn how to swim...and people continue to panic and drown.

Of course, the drowning wouldn't occur if people just stayed away from the water. One problem though: IT'S FRIGGIN HOT OUTSIDE.



Maybe the kid who was rescued will become a community advocate for water safety?

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 3:46 PM. Reason : Sad.]

8/4/2010 3:46:05 PM

Or move to Kansas.

8/4/2010 3:53:28 PM

Quote :

"it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water"

I can only do this if I take a huge breath, fill my lungs with air, and hold it. When I breathe out fully my face will go below the surface no matter how slowly I let the air out of my lungs. The only way I can float like this is by filling my lungs and using very slow shallow breaths. I guess muscles make you sink or something.

Regardless, you'd never figure this out in a panic situation when you're already drowning.

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 3:57 PM. Reason : s]

8/4/2010 3:56:38 PM

Quote :

"Maybe the kid who was rescued will become a community advocate for water safety?"

or just go completely off the deep end

8/4/2010 3:57:49 PM

Quote :

"It strikes me as incredibly reckless to take your kids who can't swim to go swimming in a large body of water knowing that if anyone goes out too far you will be absolutely powerless to help them."

Agreed. My aunt a few years ago took my cousin (her daughter) out to the ocean and gave her a raft to go out on. My cousin couldn't swim (well couldn't swim well) and my aunt didn't know how to swim. My cousin started drifting too far out and my aunt went in to get her, I guess forgetting she couldn't swim? A random guy saw them luckily and went out and saved them.

Absolutely idiotic.

8/4/2010 3:58:48 PM

Quote :

"it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water"

That's never worked for me, despite a semester of swim class at NC State.

8/4/2010 4:01:18 PM

I think it's easier for women due to the body fat in their chest. My mom used to be able to comfortably float on her back like she was laying on a raft.

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 4:06 PM. Reason : l]

8/4/2010 4:06:18 PM

^^it's much easier to do in salt water. In fresh water unless you're fairly chubby you can't float too well. Even in salt water I have a hard time keeping my legs floating at the surface (since they're just muscle and bone unlike my upper torso).

^women naturally have more body fat, so yeah it'd be easier for them

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 4:08 PM. Reason : k]

8/4/2010 4:07:22 PM

I wonder if I can float better with the 20 lbs I've gained in the last year. I'll probably actually test this out this weekend.

I've been wearing a non-USCG approved life vest and I've noticed that I would drown in it if I actually got knocked out and I didn't keep my lungs full of air. I still float, but with my nose even with the waterline. I gotta get my other vest off my buddy's boat.

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 4:11 PM. Reason : l]

8/4/2010 4:09:46 PM

So...uhhh...how many of the 6 dead kids do you think DeKendrix pulled under while he was panicking?

I'm just sayin...

8/4/2010 4:11:56 PM

6?

8/4/2010 4:13:49 PM

sometimes I get a kick out of exhaling my lungs and then sitting on the bottom of a pool. so yeah, it can be easy to NOT float in fresh water, lol. I am unable to stay underwater doing the same thing in salt water.

8/4/2010 4:14:01 PM

If we cared about poor people we would salinate the rivers.

8/4/2010 4:15:49 PM

Olympic Swimmer Promotes Lessons for Minorities
July 22, 2010

Quote :

"Although an Olympic swimmer's message about the importance of water safety was too late to save a six-year-old Northeast girl from drowning last month, many others may be saved by his dedication to promote swimming lessons among minority youth nationwide. Cullen Jones, the first African-American swimmer to set a world record and win a gold, made a stop in the District, Tue., June 13, where he hosted a series of events to promote 'Make a Splash'— a USA Swimming initiative, which aims to promote swimming lessons by providing grant money to lesson providers to advance their programs."

http://tinyurl.com/34ossjw

Maybe this Olympian can make a difference so that tragedies like these become a thing of the past.

8/4/2010 5:29:26 PM

^ okay, that's a super cute picture with a feel good story

8/4/2010 5:30:15 PM

^ You're welcome.

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 5:33 PM. Reason : FYI: I chose the photo. I wasn't included with the story--but it should've been. ]

8/4/2010 5:33:02 PM

sad.

something like this happened near my parents house years ago.

protip: if you don't know how to swim, stay the fuck out of the water.

8/4/2010 6:30:58 PM

Quote :

"In fresh water unless you're fairly chubby you can't float too well. Even in salt water I have a hard time keeping my legs floating at the surface (since they're just muscle and bone unlike my upper torso)."

Reminds me of when those kids drowned near the camp that I talked about. One of the campers said matter-of-factly that black people are bad swimmers because they have lower body fat and thus are less buoyant than white people.

8/4/2010 7:40:22 PM

Cullen Jones swam for NC State.

8/4/2010 8:25:48 PM

^ lol, yea i think thats part of the reason that he posted it

8/4/2010 8:29:32 PM

Oh.

8/4/2010 8:33:27 PM

Quote :

"it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water "

I can fill my lungs up with air and still sink straight to the bottom in fresh water. I took a water aerobics class with my wife one time and could sink to the bottom with a floating belt on if I stopped moving. This is a large part of the reason why I only go swimming in salt water nowadays. Black people on average have denser bone and muscles than white people, so they are probably more likely to be like me and not float.

8/4/2010 9:22:31 PM

when my niece tries to float. she automatically turns over and her butt rises to the top.... apparently it's the most buoyant part of her body

8/4/2010 9:23:45 PM

i'm sorry, but this thread got hilarious halfway down the first page.

8/4/2010 10:18:12 PM

A sad and completely preventable tragedy.

Also:
Our usual perception of "drowning" isn't what most people would expect...

http://mariovittone.com/2010/05/154/

Quote :

"Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning 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 (page 14)) 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 in 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 everything looks OK – 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."

[Edited on August 4, 2010 at 11:19 PM. Reason : added article]

8/4/2010 11:16:57 PM

^very insightful article!

8/4/2010 11:28:29 PM

^^

wow, that is completely new to me. Thanks for posting that.

8/5/2010 9:21:29 AM

Quote :

"Then they drown, which makes people more scared of and wary of the water...so people continue not to learn how to swim...and people continue to panic and drown."

For me that would make me want to learn how to swim more.

In all honesty, these parents should have gone in after their kids. If there really was just a shelf they easily could have made a chain of people and pulled their kids in. At least a few of them. There is absolutely no reason why this many kids should have died, other than bad parenting.

8/5/2010 9:46:21 AM

Natural Selection. I have no sympathy.

8/5/2010 9:52:25 AM

Quote :

"There are community pools, swim classes at public schools, lakes, large ponds, etc. There's a lot of water to jump in on this planet and not every one costs money."

I went K-12 in public school and we never so much as saw a pool. My high school had one, but it was only used by the swim team. Meaning that if my parents didn't know how to swim, I wouldn't have had much opportunity at a free education. Yeah, I could have jumped in a lake, but fat lot of good it would have done me with zero knowledge on what to do. Fortunately my dad had enough money to buy consistent memberships at the YMCA and he had enough time to take us there several times a week. Now being in the water feels like the most natural thing in the world to me. This is why I have some trouble with all the people talking about how "oh well I just knew how to swim automatically, it came naturally to me." Yeah, it feels like that now, even to me. But it's fucking bullshit. Human beings are born with an innate swimming ability (infants can paddle around quite easily) but they lose that early on.

What's a travesty is that kids aren't taught how to swim in school. We'll waste all kinds of time on kickball and basketball, which to date have saved all of zero lives. But swimming? Nahhh. And I'll wager good money that the reason isn't that pools are expensive to install or maintain. No, it's the same reason that public pools are becoming less common in general: fears of lawsuits.

8/5/2010 10:00:12 AM

I'd imagine that most public universities offer swimming classes for beginners. I know NCSU does - several of my frat brothers signed up for the class and pretended they didn't know how to swim. That didn't last too long.

My high school had a pool and one of the classes offered was lifeguard training. So obviously you had to already know how to swim to take that class. But I can't remember if they had a "learn to swim" class...

8/5/2010 10:14:24 AM

^^
My comment about the ubiquitousness of water was not that people should teach themselves to swim, it's that parents have less of an excuse not to teach their children to swim.

8/5/2010 10:36:57 AM

theres this quarry on the eno that keeps takin people

and honestly, even though I can swim i am very very cautious when i am wade fishing, water topography is not a constant by any means, not to mention mud

i dont think this is the case of people being idiots its just an unfortunate thing

even if my kids supposedly know how to swim, that still dont mean that its all god and will prevent them from drowning especially in a natural situation where there are things on the bottom and water levels are fluctuating creating flows, and surprise holes and step drop offs

"they should know how to swim" aint gonna cut it theyre little kids



[Edited on August 5, 2010 at 11:09 AM. Reason : f]

8/5/2010 11:07:07 AM

Quote :

"it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water"

you try to sell to me that all i have to do i lay on my back and I float

thats bullshit it is impossible for me to float, and no its not because im panicking

8/5/2010 11:11:17 AM

Quote :

"even though I can swim i am very very cautious when i am wade fishing"

fishing while wearing actual waders can be dangerous as hell...if those things fill up w/ water it really doesn't matter how well you can swim

wader belts are key, but I don't even use waders at all any more.

8/5/2010 11:26:58 AM

one time i got hooked in the calf by a wire leader that had gotten snagged on a log i assume, it actually pulled my ass back as i kept walkin, now thats some scary shit

8/5/2010 11:33:04 AM

Quote :

"It strikes me as incredibly reckless to take your kids who can't swim to go swimming "

8/5/2010 12:09:17 PM

For anyone who is interested, local YMCA's always offer Adult swim classes to members and non-members. You can do private lessons or join a group lesson. I always suggest group lessons for adults unless they are very frightened of the water, which then becomes a psychological assessment of the swimmer along with their learning potential.

BTW, anyone can float. Anyone can lay on their back and float without their face going under. I taught a semi-pro runner and she was able to float, even though she was all muscle. Granted it did take a little more work, but the basics are always the same. Keep your ears under water and your chin should be pointed parallel to the surface of the water (and keep neck relaxed). Typically most of the time people just don't like submerging their ears. Surprisingly enough, most people are able to float with just keeping their head in this position (with rest of the body vertical in the water).

8/5/2010 12:15:32 PM

nope that doesnt work for me my legs sink

ive heard it all before

and this was in salt water

[Edited on August 5, 2010 at 12:17 PM. Reason : nj]

8/5/2010 12:17:05 PM

While I do disagree with this statement:

Quote :

""it doesn't take swimming lessons to know that all you have to do is just lay on your back and you'll float in water""

I also call BS on ^, it can be done you just don't know the proper technique. Just like everyone has a different golf swing, sometimes you need to focus on different attributes of a position than is typical for most. But i guarantee it's where your head is, because your feet probably begin to sink.

8/5/2010 12:22:19 PM

Quote :

"^very insightful article!"

Quote :

"^^ wow, that is completely new to me. Thanks for posting that."

Most of it was new to me as well -- although it makes sense. If you are truly drowning and water is entering your respiratory system it would be impossible to talk, since that requires air to vibrate your vocal chords.


I think it is amazing how different people see the same thing. Some people are terrified of water, while my favorite hobby is cave diving. On the other hand if I didn't know how to swim, I'd probably either a) avoid water, or b) learn how to swim and get over myself.

8/5/2010 12:27:16 PM

^^so obviously it's not as trivial as some of you are making it out to be, so I don't know why people are still blaming these kids for not knowing how to float.

[Edited on August 5, 2010 at 12:29 PM. Reason : .]

8/5/2010 12:27:42 PM

i just took issue with what you quoted from riverrat

sayin stuff like that is really just playin wit peoples lives, you cant responsibly tell someone that "o all you gotta do is lay on your back and not panic and youll float"

its irresponsible

8/5/2010 12:27:50 PM

Quote :

"you cant responsibly tell someone that "o all you gotta do is lay on your back and not panic and youll float"

Agreed. Unless they have previous experience or have been taught by someone who has the knowledge, a person cannot just naturally swim or stay afloat. I don't care how many people 'learned' by being thrown into the water at the age of 3. Throw a kid in the water and tell them to float for 3 minutes, see what happens!

[Edited on August 5, 2010 at 12:33 PM. Reason : ]

8/5/2010 12:32:33 PM

Darwin.

8/5/2010 12:36:32 PM