Mainers have just wrapped up another summer on the water. Most people stayed safe while boating on the state’s lakes, cooling off in streams or relaxing poolside, but about two dozen didn’t, losing their lives to drowning.
According to the state medical examiner’s office, approximately 25 people have died from drowning in Maine so far this year, though official figures haven’t been tallied yet. National statistics show drowning is the leading cause of death for children under age 1 and the No. 1 cause of accidental death across the country for children under the age of 4.
From 2008 to 2010, about 30 people died each year as a result of drowning in Maine, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Many times, bystanders don’t even know it’s happening.
“If parents make a mistake, it’s that they think there’s going to be some sign of distress. Kids get quieter when they drown, not louder,” said Mario Vittone, a marine safety specialist with the U.S. Coast Guard and an expert on drowning and safety at sea.
Vittone authored a blog post in 2010 titled “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning” that took off on social media sites this summer. In it, he describes drowning as a “deceptively quiet event” that rarely involves the waving, splashing and yelling that most people expect.
According to a national study cited by Safe Kids USA, a national network of organizations working to prevent unintentional childhood injury, a parent or caregiver claimed to be present and supervising the children in roughly nine out of 10 cases in which a child died from drowning. The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which studies pool-related deaths, found that a lapse in adult supervision was attributed to 54 percent of drowning cases involving victims under 5 years old.
Those statistics don’t paint the full picture, according to Gerald Dworkin, an aquatics safety and water rescue expert with Lifesaving Resources in Kennebunkport. The Consumer Product Safety Commission looks only at incidents in residential pools, not at beaches or in natural water bodies. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics do reflect those deaths, but treat boating-related drownings separately and don’t track incidents of people drowning in submerged vehicles, he said.
Dworkin, who develops water safety training for lifeguards, said parents should be the first line of defense against drowning.
“I’ve seen case after case, even with trained lifeguards, where there’s a victim in distress and the lifeguard fails to recognize it,” he said.
Brian Murray, park manager at Popham Beach State Park and coordinator of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands’ lifeguard academy, said Maine state parks haven’t recorded a drowning death in years. Lifeguards look for swimmers who are bobbing at the surface, paddling too hard, or appear to be tiring, he said.
Many visitors don’t have the skills to be at the depths they’re swimming in, Murray said.
“We’ve been amazed by how many people can’t swim,” he said.
Half of all adults in the country don’t know how to swim, according to the Coast Guard’s Vittone.
Lack of skill and maturity both contribute to what’s known as the “instinctive drowning response,” which differs from aquatic distress, when people are still able to wave or call for help.
When someone is drowning, they can’t yell for help because their breathing is compromised as their mouth alternately sinks below and rises above the surface of the water, Vittone explains. Drowning people can’t wave or reach for rescue equipment because they instinctively extend their arms laterally and press on the water’s surface to lift their mouths to breathe.
They bob up and down in the water and there’s typically little splashing, Vittone said.
“If you see a kid in the water and their hair is in their eyes, that’s something else to look out for because that’s not typical … If they’re not wiping their hair away from their face, it’s maybe because they can’t. You don’t stop drowning to clear your eyes of hair,” he said.
Vittone said he has heard of a number of cases of children drowning at pool parties where plenty of adults were present.
“It’s the quietest thing happening in the party,” Vittone said. “If no one’s directly watching it happen, you don’t see it happen. [The kids] all get out of the pool because it’s time for cake, except for the one kid who’s at the bottom.”
Parents have to be familiar with their child’s swimming ability, he said. The U.S. CDC recommends designating a “water watcher” to constantly keep an eye on swimming kids, and even posting a sign instructing others not to distract that person.
Most important is knowing what to look for to prevent a tragedy, Vittone said.
“The struggle only lasts between 20 to 60 seconds, so you have to be watching,” he said.
Thank you Jackie for writing the article. This is right on the money, and what is described above absolutely happens as stated. I was renting a house with an above ground pool one summer. My two girls were 4 and 6 and all three of us were in the pool with a couple of kiddie ‘floats’. My youngest was in or on one of the kiddie floats. My oldest then said “hey dad, watch this!”, while she jumped in, which I did. I then turned around to see my 4 year old in the water looking at me with big eyes. Took me a second or two to realize that while she was vertical, she wasn’t tall enough to be touching the bottom; she was moving with the swirling current of the pool, and the water was above her nose. There was no noise, yelling, splashing, or movement at all. She was drowning before my eyes and there was nothing to indicate that. Mere seconds had passed, not minutes. Luckily I noticed the water level above her nose, grabbed her, picked her up, and was able to help her expel the water and she was ok, and she’s alive and well and 20 year old college student today. Ideally you can run this column in the early summer of every year and maybe it will save a few lives. It happened to me and my daughter. It could happen to you and your kid, or grandkid.
very imformative. Thank you
I would say the vast majority of people who drowned this year in Maine were drunk, had under lying medical conditions that made them incapable of swimming, or were sportsman that did not wear a life preserver.
any facts to back that up? Otherwise, it’s just an opinion…
Are you really jumping to the conclusion that those who drowned were somehow at fault?
I think, rather than saying the vast majority were drunk, it might be best to point out, that being intoxicated, having known underlying medical conditions, or not wearing a flotation device, definitely puts people at a higher than average risk for drowning.
There is just no reason for any young person, or adult to not learn to swim unless they have a disability that doesn’t allow it. You cannot save a drowning child unless you know how to swim. If you are not teaching your child to swim you are an irresposible parent.
I had a similar experience as yakdude when one of my kids was less than 2 years old and wasn’t yet swimming on her own so I second the dudes comment.
Great article. I would also caution parents to watch for children jumping from pool ladders or the raised sidewalls of a pool. My younger sister did that, and we allowed it, even though the instructions for the ladder clearly indicated this was an unsafe practice. I was outside the pool, my mother sitting in a screenhouse, as I supervised my ten year old sister (that would have made me twenty at the time). She jumped in, struck her head on the bottom of the pool and failed to surface. In a span of 3-4 seconds, I recognized there was a problem and vaulted over the pool side fully dressed, grabbed her and handed her to my mother as she began spluttering water from her airway. Mercifully, she was fine.
Uunder circumstances such as these, children ( and adults) can “dry-drown” later. My sister should have been taken to a hospital, but luckily she was OK anyway. Should parents witness their child drowning and rescue them, please take them to the nearest ER for an evaluation. Odds are they will be OK, but you don’t want your child to in that small minority that run into later trouble.
Signs of dry-drowning are persistent cough after a near drowning (inhalation of water), chest pain, change in mental status, lethargy, or shortness of breath. Coughing for a moment, or a few moments, immediately after a near drowning is normal and should not be cause for panic, but may indicate that a swimmer has, indeed, inhaled water into his/her lungs.
“Most people stayed safe while boating on the state’s lakes, cooling off
in streams or relaxing poolside, but about two dozen didn’t, losing
their lives to drowning.”
what makes you high and mighty to say people weren’t purposely safe?
Lighten up Francis, it was a very informative article. She was just passing on some very useful info. Maybe try switching to decaf.
Thank you for pointing out how deceptive drowning can look.
Several bystanders and I, including the parents, watched a 4 year old girl drown at the beach. The girl and her brother were catching hermit crabs near the shore in water perhaps 2 feet deep. Their parents sat on a blanket only a few steps away, talking with the children and admiring the crabs displayed in small hands.
The girl went under and came back to the surface as she had done several times before, then simply fell forward into the water, letting go of her shells and floating there. As the article states, I remember how her hair was in her eyes and her arms were out at her sides, but limp, before she fell forward. Her brother, who looked to be perhaps 8, was inches from her, but simply called out ” go again!” and resumed the game without noticing that his sister had stopped responding.
She was there for two or three minutes before her mother screeched and leapt up, realizing that the child was not playing but drowning. Her father snatched her from the water and the lifeguard ran down to help. The child did not survive, and everyone on the beach left feeling guilty and ashamed for not having recognized that a child was dying before our eyes.
That may have been an example of what I was trying to say in an earlier comment. This child may have experienced a dry drowning. That is, the larynx goes into spasm (laryngospasm) that closes the airway to prevent the inhalation of water (more water) and thus asphyxiates the subject of a near drowning.
This happened on the beach near where I grew up and a physician who had a house across from the beach did a tracheotomy on a child using the tube from his pen as a temporary airway and rode in the ambulance to Mass General Hosp. That child did survive, but only because the physician was there and was able to perform the procedure. Otherwise, when the larynx is in spasm, it is nearly impossible to breathe into the lungs of such a subject. (That should not preclude an attempt to do so, however)
If jd2008jd, or any paramedic is reading these comments, they may have suggestions for us on how to handle the situation and I would defer to their knowledge. Otherwise, I would suggest that anyone encountering such a scene begin immediately and maintain chest compressions until the subject reaches a hospital and a qualified physician can make the next call.