Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning | Hacker News Reader

Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

soundingsonline.com

40 pointskyleperik13 comments

I remember reading this several years ago, and it brings back memories of the two times I was very close to drowning.

The first time I was about 13 years old, and was swimming in the Mediterranean. Me and a friend had swim out to a raft, and when we where swimming back to the beach we made a bad decision to swim against the wind to a floating rope, instead of straight in. After about half the way I was exhausted, but I realized it in time, and turn on my back I yelled for help. My friend didn't notice, but people from the raft noticed and helped me.

The second time was in a lake, and I must have been about 20 years old. A lot of friends was swimming out and I followed, only to realize that it suddenly was too deep to stand on the bottom. I turned around and began to swim back to the beach. This time I felt the panic. I used all my energy to swim back, trying to keep my head above the water. Another friend was on the beach, recording me with his video camera (with zoom). Calling for help was not an option in my head. All energy went to keeping the mouth above the water. I exhaled under water, to maximize the time I had to inhale while the mouth was above water. I remember thinking "Stop filming and help me". Finally I felt the bottom again, and could stand on it. I have never seen that video recording and I don't remember if I ever told him how close he was to record my downing in full color...

(Sorry for errors, English isn't my native language)

Nice thing about the Mediterranean is that it's warm and salty. Even if you don't know how to swim you can float without spending very much energy, as long as you can avoid panicking.

> you can float without spending very much energy, as long as you can avoid panicking

The article makes it sound like this might be covered by the Instinctive Drowning Response? It said it doesn't look like panic, and that it involves "Trying to roll over onto the back"

I had guessed this would point to the interactive site: spotthedrowningchild.com:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/summer-of-sc...

Discussed awhile ago as a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9962185

Here's a helpful link to a youtube playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0KTqPloUiU&index=0&list=PLg...

One thing I noticed was that it seems all those rescued are black.

A majority of blacks in America can't swim suprisingly. There was a really great story on the BBC for it: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-11172054

Two families I know lost children to drowning. In both cases it was "we just looked a way for a few seconds", with intense guilt even years later.

Something I read, merciful happy ending: Father was in water with his wife, son splashing around about 10 feet away. Suddenly a boat skipper leaps off a nearby pier, runs right at them, knocks parents out of the way and gets their drowning son out of the water. Even 10 feet away they were unaware their son was drowning.

Also happy ending, YouTube of a lifeguard in a public pool. To my eyes nothing going on, but lifeguard is out of her chair and diving blowing her whistle on the way down and gets a kid safely out of the water.

As a followup: avoiding drowning isn't about learning to swim, it's about learning to be comfortable in the water and able to rely primarily on floating.

Last time I saw this story, years ago, I did a little looking around to determine if it was just one person's theory or something generally accepted by experts. It's an important question; misinformation about drowning could get people killed.

I couldn't find evidence of its acceptance by experts - every mention of the theory led back to the same person. But my time and resources were limited, and I have no expertise in this area myself; it's very possible I just didn't know where to look. Does anyone know if this theory is widely accepted by the people who know better than I do?

Googling “Instinctive Driening Response” turns up a paper “Observations on the Drowning of Nonswimmers” by Frank Pia, as pribably the original source... or rather, it turns up the citation of such, but not the paper itself.

I'm not sure what is intended by the parent, but Pia is the source to which all mentions of this theory lead, in my limited research (or Pia and Mario Vittone, the author of the article which heavily cites Pia). So the parent is not evidence of broader acceptance by others.

Videos of people drowning https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCnERyC7dwJwTvEyzYz6uxHw (non death in the ones I watched) not sure if there are better out there .

Past discussions on HN talk about what to do, which is missing from this popular article.

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