Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning
mariovittone.com
mariovittone.com
The instinctive drowning response is a climbing response. What you see are twin splashes as the person's arms flail wide looking for something to grab on to. If they find it the automatic response is to grab it, climb up, and stand on top. The person doing this is panicked and has massively more strength than you think. If you are swimming and a young child does that to you, you will go under water. If you panic, you will get the same reflex, and will drown yourself.
Therefore if you wish to rescue someone who is drowning, you have 4 basic options.
1. The most common response is to go to them and try to rescue directly. If the water is shallow enough that you can stand, letting them climb up you can be OK. Otherwise this is suicide. Frequently one drowning leads to multiple others, and this is exactly how they get started.
2. Keep your distance and hand them something to climb on. They can't see a pole to grab it, but if they touch, they will climb, which gives them air.
3. Wait until the drowning person is unconscious. Then go to them and tow them in. If you can't stand in the water, and don't have anything to do 2) with, this is recommended.
4. (For trained people only.) Swim up behind them, grab them from where they can't grab you, and lift them up to get air. Talk soothingly to them until they relax, and then tow them in. If they get hold of you, DIVE so they let go, back off, circle around, and start again.
If you do not have lifeguard training then I strongly recommend against trying #4. Unless you know how to do the eggbeater you won't know how to hold them out of water. And if they grab you, you have surprisingly little time to make the correct response before you are drowning as well.
Oh yes, and another data point. Drowning is the #1 cause of death in toddlers. It is quiet. It is fast. Beware of the backyard pool.
I just went white water rafting with a bunch of friends in Malaysia - and on the boat were 2 other folks that were not great swimmers. We were in pretty good rapids, and the odds were for us flipping at some point. We were all wearing lifejackets, but in the rapids at times it feels like you aren't floating much at all.
The first patch of rapids another boat flipped and a bunch of people clutched on to each other basically climbing the ladder on each other - we quickly got to them but they all had swallowed a lot of water.
I gave a big speech about how if someone is drowning their instinct is to grab you and pull you under - so make sure when helping others you can safely just grab them.
A few rapids later we flipped. I quickly grabbed on to the raft and was doing fine - until I saw one of the poor swimmers floating face down drinking a lot of water and heading towards more rapids. I swam over and grabbed on to her, flipped her on her back and told her to relax we were going to be fine. Then we hit some more rough water and all of a sudden she was pushing down on my shoulders and I was under water for about a minute as we passed through rapids and she was struggling to stay on top of me. I outweighed her by 50 pounds and still struggled to get out from under her while being tossed around in the water. I was comfortable for the first 30 seconds or so, but at that point I started to get the whole "Damnit, I am drowning" feeling. I finally separated myself from her, threw up a few times, and then held the top of her lifejacket from a behind.
My long winded story is intended to say one thing. If someone is drowning, their natural instinct will be to climb on top of you to get above water. It doesn't matter how much bigger you are - how much better of a swimmer. Even if you are really experienced it can still be difficult to rescue a drowning swimmer.
I don't think I was ever seriously at risk with a life jacket on and plenty of other boats very close. But through the rapids - 10 feet away can mean you can't reach the person for a few minutes downstream.
Talking about it makes me want to do some more rapids - it was my first time and I really enjoyed it. It was class 4-5 so fairly difficult rapids even for a 6 man raft. Made for a lot of fun, especially when sitting in the front!
Reading this, I connected the dots on a childhood experience of mine. When I was very young, I was in a public pool that had a "big" deep end, about 5.5 feet. I couldn't swim, but I still went to the deep end. I sank to the bottom and jumped to the surface to get air, and slowly traveled wherever I wanted to go.
All of a sudden, WHAM! I got tackled from behind by a lifeguard and breathed a mouthful of water. He took me out and asked me if I was OK. Between hacking coughs I said I was. My mom brought my towel to me and asked me what I was supposed to say. I yelled and slapped his legs with my towel. I probably got punished for that later.
At the time I didn't understand why the lifeguard rescued me. I felt fine, and I was probably about a minute away from the edge of the pool at the rate I moved. But that's exactly what I looked like from the surface - both arms grabbing upwards and sideways to drive me to the surface
I'm not a trained rescue professional, and I didn't know any of this information before you posted it. It's kind of amazing to look back and see how textbook his response was (and how terrifyingly unprepared I was).
(Emphasis mine.)
I fully agree that waiting for unconsciousness is a very bad idea. Obviously it is an option of last resort. However from my training, I believe it to be a better idea than getting killed. And in my training it was suggested as an option of last resort if we had no other options and didn't feel comfortable making a rescue.
And yes, there are a lot of variables that come into play. For example my instructor once saw 3 people drowning in a river. She rescued 2 and let the third drown because she was developing hypothermia. (The story is that one broke through thin ice, the other two tried to rescue the first. The one who died was one of the would-be rescuers.)
However in general if you have the knowledge and experience to properly judge those factors for yourself, you should know more about drowning than my brief blog post.
Not obviously, since you listed it third of four and fourth was roughly "swim where they can't grab you, and drag them back to shore while avoiding their grasp", which sounds pretty straightforward to an untrained reader.
To give an example of what can go wrong, your description suggests that you just hold the person where they can't reach you and drag them. But if you try that you'll find out the hard way that there is no good way to drag the person while they are still panicking without getting grabbed.
To give another problem, can you swim in place for a minute with your hands out of the water? Try it before confidently asserting that you can. And that is substantially easier than swimming in place, holding a struggling, panicked person up.
Those are among the reasons why I've so strongly recommended that untrained people avoid option #4. If you can stand on the bottom, fine. Otherwise, not so fine.
Another important thing that they brought up in my training: the first thing to check for before going in to save someone (land or sea) is if the conditions are safe. As far as I know, every trained rescuer is told to put their own safety above the person or people they are trying to save. While I don't fault anyone that sacrifices themselves to save others, it doesn't make sense to add another death to what is already a tragedy.
Example scenario (based on a real life occurrence, as related by my instructor): You approach an indoor pool, and see what looks to be a child floating face down in the water, and an adult also floating similarly nearby. Your first instinct might be to dive in to save one or both of them, but a subtle clue is present: while the child is in swimming attire, the adult is in street clothes. In actual fact, a live wire has somehow come to be in contact with the water -- the adult had dived in to try to save the child, but was electrocuted.
The lone shark starts at one end of a 25 meter pool, all the minnows at the other. The coach blows the whistle and all the minnows have to try to reach the other end without getting caught at the surface. Any minnows caught at the surface immediately become sharks. Repeat until there are no minnows.
I wasn't the fastest swimmer, but I could easily hold my breath from one end of the pool to the other, including wrestling underwater with sharks. If Sharks and Minnows were an Olympic sport I would have been competitive. Of course, that was when I was twelve ;-) At this point, I think I'd carefully consider how to approach an obviously drowning person.
My strategy was to breast-stroke as fast as I could while not quite scraping the bottom of the pool with my chest.
I usually came out pretty well in the end :)
We would also do exercises in the diving pool of treading water for a half hour+ at a time. Good times.
(I was also around 12)
Absolutely.
NOLS and the Sierra Club tell you the same thing, as well -- if you lead a hike for the Sierra Club and someone gets hurt, the FIRST thing you do is make sure the situation is safe. It doesn't do anyone any good if someone gets hurt and you get yourself hurt trying to get to them -- because now there are TWO victims.
Or more specifically, watch yourself before deciding not to mention it because it's "obvious".
As for you understanding the risks of #4 when explained, if you had understand it when it was first explained you shouldn't have responded as you did. Go back and re-read my original post. I said not once, but twice, that this was for trained people only. I further gave as two reasons the inability of untrained people to properly support a struggling person in the water, and the speed with which a mistake gets you killed. Yet your reaction was that #4 didn't look so bad.
I described #4 in the amount of detail I did because I thought people would be curious about it. But if people are going to misread my attempt to satisfy curiosity as a howto, it would have been much better for me to say no more than that going after a person drowning in water over your head is a recipe for suicide unless you have specialized training.
Precisely why 3 was before 4. 4 is only an option if you know you're capable of it, and know why. If you think you are, you're wrong.
Unskilled and unaware of it. Deadly unk-unks.
Don't underestimate a drowning swimmers ability to grab and hold you under the water - they are fighting for their life. It sounds ridiculous, but I have seen a small child do so to a large adult many times.
As btilly points out very aptly the first step to the rescue always has to be getting the person to calm down. However the moment they start to climb you, you need to go under to get them off. If you do manage to get a grip behind them and they start to struggle their sometimes lifeguards will arch their backs pulling both the rescuer and the victim's heads under water, this hopefully gets them to calm down.
One point that isn't mentioned is that this is an entirely different situation if you have a flotation device buoyant enough to hold both of you. Lifeguard tubes are ideal for of course ideal but fun noodles or kickboards can be used in a pinch. With such a device, your goal is to get a hold of the person without losing your float. With Lifeguard tubes you want to approach the person (ideally from behind) with the tube across your chest underneath your arms and grab them underneath their arms once you have them try to get as much of their weight onto the tube. If the tube is supporting their weight then they can't put any unexpected pressure on you, and they'll calm down very quickly when they feel the stability.
Edit: Having read the article--a noodle probably won't help somebody who's past aquatic distress and has started drowning.
What solution do you propose instead?
It's not unprecedented either. In CPR training, you are taught the Heimlich. You are also taught that you have to ask someone who is choking if they want help (or you will be sued, regardless if you save them). If they say no, they don't want help, you can either leave them to die, do it anyway and get sued for all you are worth (don't count on mercy, the law is 1000% against you), or wait until they pass out and then do it anyway (you are then protected by the Good Samaritan law)
Good Samaritan laws are 1000% in favor of the rescuer (especially if that rescuer is a lay person).
TL;DR; If you are familiar with the Heimlich Maneuver, and you see someone who is choking (can't speak or cough, clutching their throat, etc), _please_ don't hesitate to act.
Is this common advice?
It should go without saying, but your immediate course of action is to call for help and/or designate someone to do so in case of an actual drowning situation.
Your preferred choice of action is to stay out of the water entirely. Do not get in the water unless you must. Use any means at your disposal from lines to poles to thrown floatation devices to safely assist the victim. Keep eyes on the victim, assign someone to do so as well - in case you need to gather emergency equipment (above or swimming aides like mask/fins if they are available and if you are going in).
Next would be a wading assist, again, waist/chest deep wade into the water with a line/pole/floatation device.
Finally, if you must enter the water remember that YOUR SAFETY is above that of the victim. If you allow the victim to overpower you, you will become a victim yourself. The most powerful tool at your disposal at this stage is your voice. Talk to the victim, reassure them, let them know you are there for them and everything will be ok. Reel them back from the edge of panic. After that, the next powerful tool at your disposal if you are overtaken by a panicked swimmer is to dive and push the victim away from you while under water - the victim will not follow you down. Rinse repeat until the victim calms down, you get a hold on them from behind, or they pass out. Having the victim pass out is not the worst thing that can happen. It may require rescue breaths and/or cpr once you get the victim to shore/boat.
First, try and reach something out to the victim for him to grab hold of. If that won't work, try to throw something for him to hang on to. If that fails, go to them in some kind of boat (though a surfboard may work too). If, and only if, all those things do not work, swim out to rescue them.
[Edit: after having read the article, I realize that this is advice in what to do for someone experiencing aquatic distress, not someone who is drowning. My apologies.
Wait for their hands to stop moving.
that would be when they dip under and don't come back up? They're lungs would be full of water then? So you would have to swim down to them, pull them to dry land (they won't float) and resuscitate them?
They won't sink at this point, they'll just float with their face in the water. (There is a reason why the dead man's float is called that. See http://www.ehow.com/how_6582_survival-float.html for a description.)
And yes, at this point they'll have water in their lungs, and may need CPR.
I understand sometimes that could be the only option... but seems like a heavy responsibility.
If you're not trained, then getting in over your head (literally!) is an easy way to commit suicide. I had multiple years of lessons before any instructor gave me any instruction on how to go after someone in the water beyond, "Don't."
Now one thing that I didn't talk about was how you can tow someone in the water. If you have any swimming training you may be familiar with the elementary backstroke. (If not, hopefully you know the breaststroke, basically it is a version of that except on your back.) If you continuously do the kick from that, you get the whipkick. (Well to get it right you need to keep the knees a little closer together than many people's breaststroke, but close enough.) It turns out that the kick is enough.
Now what you do is lay the person with their head on your chest, your arms coming under their shoulders and crossing their chest, and just do that kick as fast as you can. You won't move very fast, but you can keep both your face and theirs in the air as you go. If you get them early enough, there is a good chance they will start breathing on their own as you tow them. At which point you get them to land and your job is done. If not, you'll get to land alive without having done further damage and can start CPR. (A life skill that I firmly believe everyone should have.)
One of the ways I have fun in the water is to breathe a good amount of my lungs out, and sit on the bottom as long as I can. Sit, not hold-by-swimming. It's an incredibly effective way of learning how to control your heartrate & panic response to holding your breath, because it's hardly possible without control, and then it's pretty darned easy.
"Ommmblblblubublbubublublb"
When in a dangerous situation, your first responsibility is to yourself. Rescuing someone else can be risky, and getting yourself into the same situation as the person in trouble helps no one, and increases the burden on any other would-be rescuers, whether professional (lifeguard, fire fighter, etc.) or another Good Samaritan like yourself.
But I agree that it seems like waiting for the drowning person to become unconscious dramatically increases the chance that they won't survive. That's gotta be a tough decision to make.
As such, I would say it's not unreasonable to wait for the drowning person to lose consciousness if you aren't confident you could prevent or deal with him or her dragging you down.
However, the good news is that drownings are one of the few times where Hollywood-style CPR "Do a couple rounds and they wake up" can occur. Their heart stopped beating because it stopped getting oxygen, not due to some other type of damage. So if you do CPR for a little while and get their heart oxygenated again, it can start back up in its own (most pools nowadays have an AED as well)
First, try to reach them with a pole or something from outside the water
Second, if that doesn't work, throw something that floats like a vest or life preserver. Hope they grab on to it.
Only as a last resort, actually swim out to a drowning person. Your objective should be to put the thing you just threw at them in their hands, not to drag them back to safety.
The following year they changed the "rules" and the instructor (who was also a teacher in my high school) said that we were now to keep an eye on a struggling victim, and attempt a rescue only after they stopped struggling. I think they'd had too many lifeguards end up in need of rescue themselves when they went after a panicked victim and got yanked underwater.
Oh, how wrong I was. Despite the fact that I knew I was perfectly safe, the second my face was immersed in water, I had to fight hard to not panic. I felt waves of fear threatening to engulf me, and it took every ounce of self control not to bolt for the surface (which can injure or kill you). Two other students did bolt for the surface before being grabbed by instructors. I later learned that this is a very common, instinctive reaction.
I was amazed at how powerful this reaction was, and gained a newfound respect for the lizard brain.
The odd thing was that the place I was taking the Certification allowed fun divers with only an Open water Cert to dive the caverns (with guides, of course). After my experience, there is absolutely no way I would ever, ever, ever advise anyone to ever go cavern/cave diving without the appropriate instruction and cert level. If for only the reason of exposure to cave(rn) panic inducing situations. It is the lack of exposure that will bring on a massive panic attack at the absolute worst moment that can kill not only the diver, but the entire group.
Personally, I had a weighting issue. As in I was too heavy. the instructor told me to use 10% bodyweight + 6 lbs. as the weight. 175 lbs, head to toe 7mm wetsuit, one AL80 tank @ 2500 psi, fresh water - anyone know the algo for figuring weight with these variables? Haven't done my peak performance buoyancy yet... My trim was off, we went over a cliff with an overhang, I was in the process of calling the dive at this point as my trim was positioning me vertically. As soon as I hit vertical my belt slid right off into the 150 ft abyss taking a fin with it and I started ascending quicker than I would have liked. At that point my self rescue brain kicked in with my Rescue diver training. I absolutely made sure i was breathing, put my right hand above my head to protect from the overhang, made sure my reg was in my mouth, my mask was on and tried to deflate my bcd but could not get the proper positioning. I was also tied up in the line. The safety instructor saw all this, was able to hang onto my leg and flaire out to increase drag on the way up.
Needless to say, I made it out alive. I have a new respect for diving and the cardinal rules that you learn in your Rescue class that are the key ingredients in what makes an accident an accident.
[edited for buoyancy variables]
This was a total failure from your instructor. You do not try to calculate the correct weighting -- there is too much of individual variance. Instead you just measure. Get in shallow water and add weight until you are comfortable. (Make sure you are not either almost too heavy or almost too light, both can be problematic.).
Even small things like differences in what you ate last night can have serious effect on the amount of weighting you need. (too much gas in intestines...)
It's highly unusual (not to mention irresponsible) to ask diver to do this for the first time outside of a confined-water scenario (like a swimming pool), where the water is shallow and immediate ascent is safe.
As a PADI course this skill-set will ALWAYS be taught in a pool or shallow water.
1) I was Yelling and screaming, and my friends at shore continued to stare toward me like everything was completely normal.
2) I was not thinking clearly that the noise from the ocean and waves would not allow my friends at shore to hear me.
3) I was stupid enough at that moment to waste energy by waving and yelling rather than trying to stay afloat.
4) Knowing how to swim well in a pool had little to do with knowing how to swim well in the ocean.
5) During the panic, I did not try to lay on my back on the water, knowing salt water keeps you afloat without much movement necessary
6) Having friends with you is no benefit at all during such a situation. In fact, it's usually a bad thing, because everyone is fighting for their lives, and no one cares what they need to push down to pull themselves up.
Admittedly, we had had a few drinks and lots of food before we went in. Luckily we all survived, but we had all accepted the worst possible outcome. I was able to get out without a lifeguard, but needed to go call one for 2 of my friends who were in worse conditions than I was.
If you ever get stuck in a rip current, swim diagonally toward shore.
Also, if you get tired don't fight the rip because you will risk drowning. Float on your back and wait for help.
If you are on a patrolled beach, and you find yourself in a rip, the easiest thing to do is just roll on to your back and wait for help to arrive - maybe waving a hand in the air occassionally. You certainly don't need to worry about getting swept out to sea, never to be seen again - lifesavers check rips roughly about once every 15 seconds or so (and no, I'm not exagerating - they know where the rips are, and they know that these are a big source of danger). If you are an ok swimmer you might try swimming parralel to the beach to get out of the rip before turning into the beach again. If you're a strong swimmer you can probably swim back diagonally, although if you're a strong enough swimmer for this you probably never thought of yourself as being in trouble anyway, so you probably don't need the advice.
Where I was at, they didn't even see us drowning for approximately 5 minutes. Where one of our group members had to go tell the lifeguard that people were drowning for them to notice.
It was 5:30 in the evening, so maybe that was part of the problem, I'm not sure.
Surfers like to recognize where the rips are so that they can get back out more quickly for the next good wave. :-)
I've read about the cases were people were "lost" in the ocean (the current brought them far away from the shore), but what are the odds if yo keep your calm? I am used to swimming in rivers.
I can only tell you how it felt for me. The rip current pulls you backward, not downward. And the fight against the backward pull power of the ocean directly gets you very tired, and being very tired causes you to not be able to push yourself up too far, causing big waves to hit you in the face, wherein you start swallowing water and get even more tired.
I was swimming away from shore for a while, diving through waves. At one point I checked for sand under my feet and didn't feel any, but kept swimming because the group I was with still was. I got a little tired, and decided to say screw it to my group and I turned around. As I tried to swim back toward shore, the distance from where I was to where the shore was seemed to double. The more I swam toward shore the farther away I was getting. I had a lot to drink and eat in my body, so my muscles weren't functioning perfectly or smoothly anyway. When you witness the distance increasing so drastically, you panic, and you start doing illogical things. Getting on my back did not cross my mind for a millisecond.
It feels like no matter how hard you try you'll just get pulled in further, and that's scary (but not true).
Bingo. Rip current drags you out to sea, and the immediate reaction is swim towards the shore. The rip current is stronger than you are, so you exhaust yourself and drown. If you swim diagonally towards the shore (well, I was taught to swim parallel towards shore until out of rip current) you will eventually be able to reach shore.
Reminds me of people running away from a tall falling object like a tree. You won't get away running away from it, only by running out of it's path.
I pulled someone out once (in flagrant violation of the above advice) -- my (possibly inaccurate) recollection is that he made no noise whatsoever between entering the water and exiting it beyond the sound of the first splash.
As I recall, her claim was that they were less effective, and carried a significant risk of causing injury.
// I was somewhat shocked when I did an L2 First Aid course a couple of years back. The Ambulance Officer running the class talked about CPR -- push much harder than you think you should. A couple of broken ribs will heal. A stopped heat beat wont.
That same medic also told me that generally the victim will vomit, probably right into your mouth.
I have known many women who espouse things like this, whether it is right or not, whether it flies in the face of reality or not, because things don't line up with how they want the world to be. They'd rather pretend than go with what works. Sadly, it almost always seems to pertain to something truly serious that puts life or limb at risk.
Broken bones are better than dead.
As a female ex-lifesaver, I agree wholeheartedly with the instructor referenced in the op. There are definately techniques that don't involve force, and which work. For example one thign that you are taught is that a drowning person is never going to reach down into the water to grab you. So one technique we learned was to approach from below. Lift the person up from just below the waist (they're always in a rigid vertical body position when drowning). This way your arms and legs aren't within reach. Once the person is able to get a few deep breaths of air, they stop panicking, and you can release. Back off, come up for air yourself, and just keep repeating until they're calm enough to approach from the surface.
It's not easy though - it requires that you have a decent capacity for swimming submerged yourself, and if the person does manage to grab you with their legs or whatever, or if you make a mistake and don't back off far enough when coming up for air yourself, you can get into trouble, which is why you need to be trained before trying it.
As a lifesaver you normally have a second lifesaver with you when effecting a rescue - that person's job is to talk to the drowning person when they are being held up, telling them to relax, lie on their back etc etc. But if you don't have that second person, you just have to keep holding them up until they calm down.
The whole point of this type of technique is that it never puts the rescuer in a battle of strength with the rescuee - at any point you can get them to let go by submerging yourself, but just to be sure you've positioned yourself in a place where they aren't even likely to try to grab you, and if they do, they can't get at your arms/legs, which are well below the surface.
At any rate, getting back to your comment - the teacher's instruction had nothing with wishful thinking, and everything to do with knowledge of the most effective means of rescue - that you misinterpreted it as wishful thinking reveals that you are indeed sexist.
It sounds a lot more risky than approaching from behind and putting them in a lock. How is greater risk = more effective?
You're running into the Dunning-Kruger effect here - you don't know what you don't know. Believe me, as someone that has been extensively trained in lifesaving, there are techniques that are safe and effective, and these techniques never rely on force. How could it be otherwise - we'd be condemning strong people to just die - "Jeez, sorry mate, I see you work out in a gym, and are probably stronger than every lifesaver on the beach, so I guess it's just bad luck for you!".
It is so strange to me that television continuously presents things which are disconnected from reality, and people, who watch television for hours a day, end up using it as a replacement for life experience. I cannot really blame people for this; I think most people (here in America, at least) see most of their lives through television, so it's only natural that it's where most of their 'experience' comes from. But it's still dangerous. And things like this (choking, injuries/wounds, freezing, etc.) are all presented in such an unrealistic way, but with such consistency, that people never even question whether or not that's how it is outside of television and movies.
I wish television producers were more responsible. It's made us into a nation of incorrectly trained, mislead incompetents.
Article is light on HN content, though.
Aside from their absurd depiction of computers and other high tech, which go without saying...
Hollywood depiction of violence is inaccurate, and I think partly responsible for some common fears. On one hand, you'll see hand-to-hand combat go on seemingly forever, with the combatants absorbing huge amounts of damage, yet continuing on without any apparent loss of stamina.
On the other hand, guns are depicted as instant killers. A single shot, even in an extremity or the belly, is immediately incapacitated and no longer a factor (except possibly at the end of the battle when we discover they've been playing dead). In reality, there's nothing that a single shot will do to immediately incapacitate someone, short of outright destruction of the CNS. Even a shot to the heart, femoral artery, etc., leaves at least several seconds of consciousness during which a determined attacker could get off another shot of his own. And according to my self defense firearms instructor, in a conflict it's likely that you won't even notice you're shot immediately, or at least not be aware of the severity.
From that day forward they hire RNs part time to fill in gaps in the script with medical terms. A friend worked in an office that contracted out an army of RNs for this kind of script work. Pretty weird when you think about it.
After I ran out of air and strength... it was actually my (then 9 year old) brother who saved me.
As a child I was simply infuriated with my mother, that she would sit there smiling acting like everything was okay while I was fighting for my life. I guess I know why now.
Thanks for this article -- it won't be forgotten.
Tweedy said he saw someone playing in the water. He looked again, and ocean waves were rolling the man over.
http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20100630/ARTICLES/1006...
RIP Carter
I went white water rafting with some friends, and we lost it on a tricky section of water. Our instructor was stuck standing on a rock by the raft, and I was in the water holding on to the raft. Fine, except that I was facing the rapid waters head-on, unable to speak and breathe. And still I held on to the raft. It took the instructor screaming that he was willing to break my hand by stamping on it - and then giving my hands a swift warning kick - before I would let go, float away and recover myself.
It was truly scary at the time to think that whilst I'm rational, good with water etc, when in that mildly uncomfortable situation, my brain wanted to hold on, even if it meant I was taking on water. I'm not sure why the threat and warning kick were so effective, but am hugely thankful I got away with nothing but a bit of a bruised mind :)
Lessons learned: swim parallel to the coastline & don't swim alone. When you start to cramp up start to swim more conservatively, change styles, when it gets really bad, assume a fetal position & focus on floating, don't try to swim. The cramps will eventually go away, then you can slowly start moving again. Watch out for hypothermia.
We also learned that if the victim tries to climb you, to submerge a bit (so they let go) and punch him (or her, sure) in the nuts, and to then rescue him.
“Teach them Torah, teach them a trade, teach them to swim and find them a wife.”
The thing I remember most is that the overriding sensation was not panic, but calm -- a weird, fatalistic calm. I was gong to die: "oops". It really is an odd physiological response, and you have absolutely no control over it.
I'm not sure exactly on my recollection, however, I had a similar incident and my reaction was not anything calm. I was angry and very frustrated. My guess is that it probably depends on the person and situation
It does explain why psychics often talk about how something happened in your childhood involving water. That always seemed pretty unlikely to hit to me, but I guess not.
It really is too bad that with all the web technology today, videos like these are not available for free. Seems like they'd help save some lives if they were.
I don't mean to sound skeptical, I'd just like a little clarification. I never understood how swimmers can possibly drown unless hypothermic or completely exhausted. If this is the case, then it's horrible that we haven't evolved out of this destructive "drowning response instinct".
Somehow my toe touched something on the bottom and I rocketed out of the water like an explosion. The next thing I knew, I was flopped over onto a large rock like a fish, a few feet from where I fell in.
I still have no idea exactly how that all happened, but near as I can guess I gave the best leap of my life and scrambled the rest of the way up.
I really need to learn how to swim. :-(
My step sister was walking in the water, when she steped on more muddy bottom and fall under water. She was quiet and doing strange things with her hands, nobody reacted for a while, then I walked to her and give her hand (I was able to stand on the bottom there, but only barely). It looked funny and not dangerous at all - like she just were playing in water, uncle and father didn't know anything is wrong.
To this day I thought that she wasn't really drowning - because she was supposed to do the show like in TV.
You aren't unconscious yet because you still have plenty of oxygen, but your instincts have been triggered on a more primitive level -- possibly initiated as the lungs failed to function as expected.
It takes continuous, prolonged effort to stay afloat, and a fair bit more to move forward. The less you move forward, the slower your progress and the greater the energy you need to reach shore. You start drowning when you can no longer stay afloat - that is, when you can not quite move enough water downwards to support your weight. When you have no air, you have no patience. Water is quite difficult to lean on, and you will still easily climb out of the water if presented with a grip (but will may not be able to crawl far on the ground).
Swimming is excellent exercise. It will tire you out thoroughly and quite unexpectedly, but you will want to keep close to firmament.
http://gcaptain.com/maritime/blog/cold_water?11198
Bunch of stuff I didn't know.
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