Safety Speaker Summer Safety Alert
As a safety speaker four years ago, I published an article about water safety. The response was very dramatic. I have decided to republish this article every year to help everyone enjoy the water with no loss of life. This article is dedicated to Zachary, a young grandson of a fellow safety professional who left this life June 1st a couple of years ago. Below is the original article, the response and my follow up article.
Water Safety Tip – Summer is Here
(Originally published 2013)
As a safety speaker I love all the great ideas I pick up from my clients. I mentioned a few weeks ago before every meeting including conference calls, one of my international consulting clients begins with a safety moment. For today’s call, I offered to give the safety moment before we began. Due to its timely nature, I wanted to share it with you today.
On Saturday, my daughter brought our two grandchildren, Owen, who is 3 years old and Lauren, who is 5 years old, to swim at our house. Lauren has had lessons and is capable of swimming from one end of the pool to the other without pushing off the side. Owen is learning and currently loves our spa, which is about 50 feet from the pool near our bedroom door. He does great in the spa because he can easily stand up anywhere. The danger is when he is in the spa and Lauren is in the pool, your attention is divided.
In addition to being a professional safety speaker, I have been a trained lifeguard for many years and I can tell you there is only one safe approach. There must be someone watching each of the children. The illusion is you would hear if something is wrong and would be able to quickly run to their aid. At the very first National Safety Council Annual Congress I attended, I learned from a retired Coast Guard instructor when people drown, most of the time they do so quietly.
Think about it! What is someone who is drowning desperately trying to do? Get Air! They are breathing in. Noise happens when you expel air and yell. Because they are out of breath, they often can’t make noise. One of the original Beach Boys, Dennis Wilson, who was a surfer and a great swimmer, drowned at the side of a boat just a few feet from other people at a party. No one saw him go under and no one heard him.
I witnessed this several years ago on a Boy Scout camp out with our troop. I was scoutmaster and serving as the lookout at a troop swim at a public lake. We had a buddy board made up and had about 16 scouts in the water. The lake shore swimming area had about 150 people in or near the water. As I was watching our scouts, I noticed a father with a very young daughter by his side. He was busy talking to a friend on the other side of him when the little girl slipped on the muddy bottom and went under water. I stood up and noted her position as the water was not clear because of the stirred up dirt. Of all the people at the beach, only two of us had seen her disappear. I headed to her location as did the other guy who saw her. We arrived about the same moment about 15 to 20 seconds since she went under water. The other guy reached down into the water and pulled the little girl out. It was then the father’s attention was attained. The father was upset at this guy for grabbing his daughter. I stepped in and explained she had been underwater for at least 20 seconds and this guy just saved her life. We were both thanked and after a quick visual count of my scouts, I went back to my post.
This summer, remind your employees the only safe way for children to be in water is to have someone actually watching them. The same goes for adults.
The previous safety tip is an example of how you can let employees know you really care about them. When you talk about safety off the job they know it isn’t just about saving the company money. As a safety speaker I know this from interviewing many employees.
Have a safe summer. I look forward to many miles of sunny bike riding and swimming.
Be Safe,
Safety Speaker John Drebinger
Update On Last Week’s Article
Last Wednesday morning (2013), I arrived home and pulled into my driveway and while my wife and I were listening to an interview on the radio I began to check my email on my iPad. The first one I saw was a reply to last week’s newsletter. After I read the first two sentences, I put the iPad down, waited for the end of the interview and read the email to my wife. When I finished we both had tears in our eyes. I wanted to share that letter with you this week. The person who wrote it has given me permission to share. I also wanted to share a more detailed article about how people drown.
Newsletter Reader’s Reply To John’s Newsletter
“Thanks for this very timely message, although a little late in my case. Unfortunately, I can endorse your topic from a very recent, very painful experience. Less than 2 weeks ago, on Saturday, June 1st my almost 3 year-old grandson drowned at a family party in his parents’ backyard pool. I was there but in the house at the time. My wife, along with several other adults, was sitting poolside watching the children (approximately 4 in the hot tub and another 4 in the pool). She watched our grandson jump into the hot tub and then climb back out, then turned to watch his older brother swim across the pool. She actually timed him at 1 minute, 15 seconds for the round-trip. When she looked back up to the hot tub and didn’t see our grandson, she asked if anyone had seen him and someone responded they thought he may have gone into the house. Immediately they checked in the house, where I assured them he had not come in. It was then that he was found floating face down in the presence of the 3 other children who were totally unaware of his condition. Reconstructing the chain of events, it is estimated that less than 3-4 minutes elapsed between the time he was seen jumping into and climbing back out of the hot tub and when he was found unconscious. Although a nurse, a Navy rescue swimmer/paramedic and two other trained adults immediately administered CPR, it was to no avail. His heart was revived upon arriving at the hospital and he did some breathing assisted by a ventilator, but never regained consciousness and was finally taken off life support and allowed to pass quietly wrapped in the arms of his parents 3 days later.
As you said, attention was divided between children, and the hot tub was raised above the level of the pool, so the adults sitting at the pool level could not see the water surface of the hot tub. Even the other children in the hot tub with our grandson did not realize he was in trouble. It cannot be emphasized enough; adults must be actively watching from a vantage-point where they can see the surface of the water, and cannot afford to be distracted by casual conversation or other things going on around them. Drowning happens quickly and silently. This message needs to get out to every adult. I have become a spokesman through painful experience. I hope to spare others my family’s grief.”
Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning by Mario Vittone (Used with permission)
The new captain jumped from the deck, fully dressed, and sprinted through the water. A former lifeguard, he kept his eyes on his victim as he headed straight for the couple swimming between their anchored sport-fisher 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. 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
▪ Appear to be climbing an invisible ladder.
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.
(See a video of the Instinctive Drowning Response)
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