Scout Drowns

[Hal_Crawford]

I think that we tend to be a little too quick to find offense when scouting is mentioned in the media. Reading the first article I don't see it as a comment on scouting. The victim was described as an Eagle scout, and Emergency Medical Technician and a young man who dreamed of being a firefighter. I believe that these facts were included to put a face on a tragedy rather than to malign Eagles, EMTs or future firefighters. What I see described is a promising young man who's life was cut short by a tragic accident. There is no indication that scouting somehow contributed to his death.

 

I also find circulating these articles to be useful. The more we know about the risks and consequences the better we can prepare ourselves and our scouts.

Hal

[Gunny2862]

I don't know but after having been a Scoutmaster if they tie my death (by oh let's say something silly like working in a Fireworks stand - for my Family not Scouting)(Or if at a non-Scouting event by drowning) to not following Scouting rules aka no running Fireworks stands as fundraisers(Or not following SSD or SA while not at a Scouting event - although I largely do those things anyway - to some extent).

I'm going to be really cheesed.

[Greaves]

Llbob said: "Here's a Safety Afloat condition I routinely violate:

Regardless of how large or small a vessel is all passengers must wear a PFD at all times. Honestly if we are on a Ferry boat, large fishing boat (aka party boat) or large sightseeing boat I just go with the flow."

 

scouting.org says: "Safety Afloat standards apply to the use of canoes, kayaks, rowboats, rafts, floating tubes, sailboats, motorboats (including waterskiing), and other small craft, but do not apply to transportation on large commercial vessels such as ferries and cruise ships."

 

http://www.scouting.org/scoutsource/HealthandSafety/GSS/gss02.aspx

 

ferries are specifically exempted from PFD requirement. "Large commerical vessels" may include whale watching vessels. Are they large? (I know they're commercial)

[Beavah]

Yah, LIBob, you're just drownin' da rest of us in words, eh? I think it would be best if yeh kept da focus on one article. Moving from one popular press piece to another doesn't allow for any meaningful analysis.

 

Shame yeh didn't do any additional research on some of da pieces. Yeh mentioned the Clackamas accident, but again I'm not sure of the point. The adults had SA training, and extensive experience on the river. The river was running at springtime flow rates, but springtime flow rates on a Class II river do not constitute "too high", eh? In fact, if yeh finished your research, you would have found this report from another paddler:

 

I told the writer that with the proper training, skills and judgement it would be easily possible to successfuly negotiate this section of whitewater (I floated a 10 mile section just upstream with a 10 year old girl in a Jackson fun 1 the following day.

 

Here's what really happened, based on experienced whitewater investigators:

 

Wrapped around Finn's wrist was the rope from a throw bag, a rescue device he apparently grabbed as the boat went over. It later came out that a throwbag was deployed from another canoe once the original canoe capsized. The rope was then released by the original rescuer in the rescue canoe. The rope got tangled around the victims wrist, while the other end got chaulked and or tangled on a rock or debris. The rope shockloaded and trapped the victim about 6 feet under the water - (the River was 10 feet deep).

 

The safety line -- which is 50 feet long with a weighted bag at the end was looped around Terry's wrist at one end and trapped underwater at the other.

 

A device intended to save a swimmer in distress had trapped the boy six feet below the surface in water 10 feet deep. The Clackamas County medical examiner said Tuesday that the official cause of death was accidental drowning. It was a fluke accident, Richards and Brawner agreed. Even with the proper equipment, a boy died. Rescuers eventually untangled Finn from the line and pulled him onto a boat.

 

Clackamas County Sheriff's media relations officer said "No amount of experience or type of floatation could have prevented this accident."

 

So by readin' popular press accounts about an accident all the way across the country on a river you have never paddled, you've decided to disagree with da local county sheriff who had rescue personnel on-scene that watched the accident happen.

 

And based on that knowledge, you feel it's necessary to castigate some fellow scouters for a truly tragic event.

 

Perhaps yeh might want to think about that a bit, eh? Does that approach really do the scouting community a service?

 

As for da young lad who fell of the whale watching vessel, he was apparently knocked unconscious and sucked into the propeller. No PFD was required by SA, and most PFDs won't save an unconscious person, let alone one who gets into da prop stream. The extra few pounds of flotation a PFD provides is nuthin' compared to those forces.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[Oak Tree]

Greaves - I think those statements you reference are among those that were recently updated to make more sense. It used to be the way LIBob describes, and it seemed ridiculous to take some of the rules literally. The new wording is much improved. Still, there is always a place for judgment as to which rules apply where.

 

I do think that there is value to understanding failures so that you can work to avoid them. You'd want to make sure you had the detailed analysis, though.

[LIBob]

Well Beav I have not castigated anyone about anything.

 

What I have done is to take a handful of articles about scouts drowning and combed through them to see anything in the article could leads us to believe part of SSD or SA was not being followed.

 

 

Along the way I have been (falsesly)accused of a great many things

including

- believing that the articles tell the entire story and provide 100% of all pertinent details

- maligning Eagle scouts and/or their parents and/or their leaders

- etc.

 

 

As for the Clackamas river drowning I clearly stated right at the top

From what I can tell the only aspect of SA they group violated was that their float plan failed to realize the river was to high and too fast.

 

That's a tough call to make. How does a person know what constituties "too fast?" I personally don't even know what guidelines to use.

Thus an appropriate response on your part might have been "Hey we agree. The leaders were trained they had rescue equipment thye jsut failed to realize teh river was too high and too fast."

 

Ya see, it's not necessary to hurl insults at me in every single post. When I say something and you agree with it feel free to write something that is friendly courteous or kind.

 

 

[LIBob]

Greaves thanks for pointing that out.

I was unaware of that.

[LIBob]

Now again I realize that the following comes from a media article but in this case I'm going to go way out on a limb and claim I the article reveals enough information that we can disuss possible causes.

 

In 2007 three adult employees at a scout camp took an aluminum boat to a lakeside bar and ran into problems as they returned in the early am.

 

07/19/2007 (KFSN) -- Fresno County authorities have released the name of a man who disappeared after falling off a boat into Huntington Lake.

 

The man missing since the incident Friday morning has been identified as Dennis Diesenroth.

 

The 44-year-old Diesenroth went into the lake after an aluminum boat he and two other men were on capsized. The following is a synopsis of the events leading up to the boat accident and presumed drowning that occurred at Huntington Lake this past Friday morning.

 

On the night of July 12th, 44 year old Dennis Diesenroth, 30 year old Matthew David Crimson, and 45 year old Thomas Lee MacNichol were drinking at the Lakeshore Saloon at Huntington Lake.

 

All three subjects had been working at Camp Oljato, a Boy Scout camp located in Huntington Lake.

 

On July 13th some time after midnight, the three subjects boarded a small aluminum boat and started back to the camp located on the other side of the lake. A short time later, the boat capsized and the three subjects fell into the lake.

 

Nearby residents heard the subjects yells for help, called the Sheriff's Department, and responded to the location in private boats. Both Crimson and MacNichol were rescued by responding boaters. Diesenroth was not located and is presumed drowned. . . .

 

. . . Both Crimson and MacNichol were wearing life jackets. Diesenroth was not. . .

 

 

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=news/local&id=5490141(This message has been edited by LIBob)

[Beavah]

Yah, and da moral of da story is drinking and boating don't mix, eh? That's a point that's missing from Safety Afloat if yeh feel it should apply to adults and non-scouts. Of course, Safety Afloat doesn't apply to adults and non-scouts.

 

LIBob, nobody is hurling insults, and I'm sorry if it comes off that way. What we're doin' is disagreeing with your claims. In da original thread yeh made the claim that "Actually in each an every one of those scout drowning SSD was not followed. and the point of posting them was to show that even a simple google search reveals each year 1-2 scouts die because they or their leaders do not follow SSD or safety afloat. " When it was pointed out that in half of 'em SSD didn't apply, and in the rest it was adhered to, yeh didn't say "oops!"; when it was pointed out that your sources were incomplete and therefore your judgments incorrect yeh didn't say "sorry". Your data in each case actually disproved your claim.

 

I think whenever a tragedy happens there's a natural tendency for people to try to find fault. For people close to the victims, that's part of da grieving process. Gettin' angry. In the story above the dad who was finding fault couldn't even remember that his son had recently had a birthday and was no longer a teenager. That's grieving. For people farther away from the victims, there is a sense of fear. None of us ever want to be part of a scene where a kid is hurt, eh? When we read about such things, we want to find fault. It makes us feel better. It makes us feel like it wouldn't happen to us, because we're better than that other scouter.

 

While both things are natural, as someone who has dealt with accidents and such, they aren't healthy, and they don't lead to good conclusions. Accidents are complex things, with a lot of factors, eh? Even when there are mistakes in judgment, they are rarely simplistic things. Claiming that they are neither helps others prevent such things from happening, nor treats our fellow scouters with compassion and justice.

 

I think there is real merit in lookin' at good case studies of accident reports for both lessons and trends, eh? For some examples, I'd encourage yeh to take a look at things like the American Canoe Association's River Safety Reports or da Mountaineers annual Accidents in North American Mountaineering report. Other organizations compile such things for other sports and activities from diving to boating to flying, and trade publications often contain individual accident/incident writeups that make for great analyses.

 

I'd encourage yeh to check some of those sources out for how a good, useful, and non-judgmental accident or incident report is done, eh?

 

Thus an appropriate response on your part might have been "Hey we agree. The leaders were trained they had rescue equipment thye jsut failed to realize teh river was too high and too fast."

 

Nah, because we don't agree. There isn't any evidence that the river was too high or too fast for the group, eh? As I pointed out, a paddler on the scene said the stretch was safely runable by himself and a 10 year old. The mechanism of injury was a complete fluke. It was an accident. Truth is, there was no fault to be found.

 

So we do not agree, eh? I think it was just a tragedy that could happen to any of us, and it does a disservice to the family of the lad and to the scouters of that troop to try to find fault and assign blame.

 

Beavah

(This message has been edited by Beavah)

[ScoutNut]

LIBob, not sure what your last article has to do with SA/SSD at all. BSA does not require that all of it's employees follow SA/SSD in their private lives. There is also no reason to believe that these 3 men even had any knowledge of SA/SSD at all, or any need to have that knowledge.

 

Why not pull up articles of any and all boating accidents across the board? They would be just as relevant as this one, and some of your others.

 

How about this one -

 

http://www3.gendisasters.com/illinois/10516/chicago-il-eastland-disasters-jul-1915

 

I am sure with that many folks dead there must have been a few who were Scouters, and Scouts.

 

 

 

[Eagle92]

LlBob,

While your heart is in the right place, the use of articles that are not related to scouting activities does not do your argument any service. Further it is alienating the rest of us.

 

may I make a suggestion for everyone to look at the following document

 

http://srbsa.org/public/services/program/camping/drowning.pdf

 

It has the number of drownings and near drownings at BSA activities from 1981 to 2007. It looks as medical conditions, heart attacks and asthma, were some of the leading causes.

[Hal_Crawford]

Interesting that the average number of incidents dropped after 1988 from over 8 per year to less than two per year. Did something in BSA policy or training change in 1989?

 

Hal

[Engineer61]

Whenever I read an article like this, I tend to think that is a situation where the primary cause of the result was the overconfidence of one or more of the victims.

 

There are examples of this every year in the boating accidents on our lakes and reservoirs.

 

We all recently read about the 16 year old girl who attempted to perform a solo circumnavigation that failed when she suffered a mast failure in the southern Indian Ocean.

 

In my locality there are dozens of mountain rescues every year caused by people who were overconfident in their abilities or condition.

 

I suppose this is all part of the human condition. Some people know they have limitations and know what they are...while others either don't know they have limitations or misjudge their abilities.

 

[Scoutfish]

Li, nobody is insulting you!

 

But there is a flaw in what connection you are trying to make:

 

 

 

I'll make it real easy for you: NOt a single part of SSD or SA was being followed. Matter of fact, I'll bet it was the last thing any of the unfortunate people thought of.

 

The question is do you understand that: A) It was NOT being followed..

and

B) Why?

 

Why> Because these young men were not at, participating in, nor were they associating with anything BSA at the time they had their misfortune.

 

I used to do water rescue on a fire dept that I was Asst Chief of. We had an 13 foot AVON semid ridgid hull inflatable boat. Before that boat came off the trailer and before it ever touched the water, you had on your type III PFD and you water hazard helmet. You had a strobe marker on your vest and switched on even if in broad daylight at 12 noon. You handed the safety officer your action pin too!( Big ole safety pin with your name and ID number stamped in it).

 

But tomorrow, if I decide to take my boat out, I can pretty much tell you that I:

 

Will not be wearing a helmet,

Will not have my type III vest on,

will not be wearing nor have my strobe turned on,

nor will I leave an action pin with anybody.

 

Why? Because I am not taking part in, around or associating with an EMS type water deployment situation.

 

Likewise, if you go to the beach while on your own personal time, while not activly participating in any BSA function, I cannopt imagine you following SSD and SA while there.

 

Granted, these are procedutres that would benefit everybody, but outside of BSA, I do not imagine the get followed by single individuals.

 

[Scoutfish]

Engineer,

I agree with your theory.

 

I cannot provide a link, or specs , nor can I name my source, but I read an article years ago( maybe 19 years) that discussed chainsaw safety. The two biggest groups of people who sustained injuries due to mishandling of chainsaws were beginners and EXPERTS!

 

The begiiners were just too green and made stupid mistakes. Th Experts were sooooo confident that they knew everything, they had no doubt as to their bulletproofness.

 

Meanwhile, the average experienced handler had just enough experience to know what to do, yet recognized the need to be extremely careful.

 

Overconfidence can kill. Simple as that!