Drowning doesn't look like drowning

I’m a little late with the warning this year, but as people may be going a little nuts on vacation this year, a reminder:

Original article by Mario Vittone:

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning

Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event.

the rest of the article for convenience

he 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.

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Video version:

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:bump:

That time of year

By the way, drowning deaths jumped up 13% in 2020, and stayed elevated in 2021:

mainly in ages 15-44:

More people at home, more exposure to their pools?

Yep, that time of year.
My son almost drowned when he was young. Went in the pool, we were on the patio around the side of the house. Not a peep, no splashing, no commotion. His cousin came running over to us with ‘he’s in the pool’ and I didn’t even really process - because there was no indication. My brother in law beat me around the house and pulled the kid out. No screaming, no thrashing, nothing.

Yup. I almost drowned as a child. The person in the pool next to me didn’t know it was happening until I started pulling them under the water, too. Even the life guard on duty didn’t notice - it was a summer camp, and there were way too many kids in the pool.

Given the ages with the largest increases - it’s just increased risk-taking, as with increased motor vehicle crashes and drug ODs, I think.

It’s age 15-44 seeing the largest increases – as with those other “external” causes.

I think it does do well to think back to how people behaved in prior pandemics - such as in the aftermath of plagues… and maybe the Spanish flu? (Roaring 20s, anybody? we get a rerun?)

Ages with highest rate – age 1-4 – didn’t change at all. So pools at home, no change.

It’s the young adults where we’re seeing the increase.

:bump:

Hey y’all – Memorial Day is coming up, meaning this is your notice:

drowning does not look like drowning

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That’s so crazy to me. Thank you for bumping this. As a father to a young daughter I love learning about new things to freak out about

I’ve never come remotely close to drowning in a pool because it is easy to crawl out the side or pull myself over to the shallow end but I remember tipping over a kayak and thinking it was hard as fuuuuuuuuck to get back into the kayak, in fact I had to swim to a nearby dock (I had a life vest on) and have my sister drag my kayak over for me to get back into. Be very careful in open waters this summer!

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A number of years ago we were having a family Christmas event at a hotel with a pool. All of use were having a good time frolicking about…except for the 10ish year old. She couldn’t reach the bottom & apparently couldn’t tread water. She was within a couple arms-reaches of me (and many others as well) but I (we) noticed nothing. Fortunately, oldest brother, outside of the pool (in street clothes) was aware & alerted the rest of us to assist. She was quickly attended to & all ended well. The point of my story is “Drowning doesn’t look like drowning.

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Graphs from this year’s post:

plus extra content:

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All i can say is “Parents, mind your children!!”
Or, hire someone to mind your children!!

My son was at a public pool today and jumped into the deep end without knowing it was the deep end, and my husband did not notice, but a lifeguard did, thank God. Stay vigilant.

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Drowning by state death rate 1999-2022

FL is mostly dark here. I think people often do not take rip tide warnings seriously, and they can be deadly. There have been a rash of recent deaths when rip tide warnings were issued.

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