BC Coroners Service Issues Another Water Safety Caution
Prince George, BC – With what many consider to be the last true weekend of summer upon us before the fall routine gets underway, the BC Coroners Service is out with its second caution of the month in an effort to prevent any more water-related deaths.
The first plea was issued afer a spate of eight drowning deaths in the week prior to the BC Day long weekend. Since then, the research unit at the Coroners Service has compiled statistics proving this summer has been a particularly deadly one for recreational water activities.
Coroner Barb McLintock says 34 people haved drowned in recreational incidents between July 1st and August 21st, including five in Northern BC – a 50-percent increase over the past couple of summers.
While the investigations into the deaths is ongoing in all of the cases, McLintock says there are indications that this year’s high water levels may have played a role in at least some of the tragedies.
"Seven died from falling into water unexpectedly – these were people who really had not meant to end up in the water and, for various reasons, they ended up falling in," she says. "One of the things that may be a reason for that is that water levels have stayed so high along a lot of rivers and lakes in BC this year…so some places that maybe were safe to walk in other years, maybe weren’t quite so safe this year."
"One of the other things we found several cases of were people who took their life jackets along – their PFDs along with them in their boat – but they weren’t wearing them and, then, for one reason or another, they became separated from the boat."
The August 5th drowning of 59-year-old Ralph Der at Carp Lake, north of Prince George was one such tragic case, and a particularly haunting one. McLintock says the Prince George man did not have a PFD on when he jumped into the lake to retrieve his hat. "And I’m sure he thought he was just going to go out and grab the hat, and it just didn’t work out that way for him."
"So that’s why we thought that we’d put out this warning again and say, ‘take a little bit of extra care’, the water does seem to be just a little bit more dangerous this year than ever and we would really like not to have any more for the rest of the more, or indeed for the rest of the year."
Comments
I`m born and raised on the west coast and would consider myself a very good swimmer.I had also been instructed on the buddy system from a very young age and have practiced it religiously.I wonder how many of these folks that lost their battle with H2O considered them selves expert swimmers.
Hiking,fishing swimming for the most part it`s not really that difficult to find a buddy with the same interests.
Mother nature is very unforgiving and does not discriminate..especially against the so called experts…
I agree Vulgar Sage. I had the experience of being pulled out of the water by my buddies when I was drowning, and have on a least two occasions pulled someone else from the lake or river, who was also drowning.
I have a great respect for water, and its ability to kill you. What scares the hell out of me is how some parents to-day seem to be totally unaware of how dangerous it is.
I have seen on a number of occasions kids running along the river banks of Cottonwood Island Park while the water was high, chasing each other, and paying very little attention to the fast water less than five feet away. The parents were a lot further away and seemed oblivious as to what was taking place.
Scary S..t.
This is mainly because of a total lack of real education and training for people to show the risks.
To me swimming is like walking. I think both are something every person should learn. I grew up in a place which was on a fast moving river which really was not able to be used for much recreation, the same as the Nechako and Fraser. However, the large City was dotted with outdoor public swimming pools and summer vacations on the seashore were the most popular destinations.
I learned how to swim when I was 3 or 4 by holding onto my mothers shoulders, floating along on her back getting the feeling of buoyancy and learning to frog kick to move along as she swam.
When I came to Canada, the public school board required students to take swim lessons during gym classes for part of the year in grade 7.
At university I took part in competitive swimming, including water polo for which one has to be a very strong swimmer.
Other than the territories, BC has the second highest rate of drowning deaths in Canada after Newfoundland.
There is an interesting statistic about swimming alone versus swimming with a âbuddyâ. For those who drowned while engaged in the act of swimming (rather than boating) 24% drowned while swimming alone and the 76% were swimming with companion(s) who could not rescue them. So, if you use a buddy system, remember that one must keep a lockout for each other and one must actually be able to rescue the other if the need arises.
Total number of drowning in Canada is in the 500 per year range, which puts the rate about the same for most western industrial nations.
For those interested in some bedtime reading. In general, it looks like people are either not participating in water activities as much as they used to, or efforts to decrease the number of drowning are working.
http://www.lifesaving.ca/content/english/pdf/NationalDrowningReport_2011Edition.pdf
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