LA Times On Scout Safety

[SeattlePioneer]

Worth reading:

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scouts-20101205,0,5287804.story

 

 

 

[packsaddle]

A nightmarish, terrible tragedy. I can hardly express my sadness for the family. This is the kind of thing that eats at the back of my mind constantly when I'm out on a trip with the boys. I'm constantly trying to think ahead of them, "what kind of risks can they get themselves into?" while letting the boys be boys, for the most part. It's why, especially with the inexperienced ones, about a week of it is close to my limit. But so far, we've never had a serious incident, just a few cuts and bruises...and lots of great stories to 'expand' on later in life.

[acco40]

Sad. For a lot of boys this age, they encounter a lot of "firsts" - nothing unusual with that. I liked the fact that for the first time this year, the BSA had a "weight proportioal to height" type of requirement for Jambo Scoutmasters. For Double H, Philmont and other activities, the BSA has strict wieght vs. height requirements as well as blood pressure. I know that that isn't the ultimate fitness test but it is better than nothing.

 

The group should not have allowed separation. When we've gone out into the wild, I was almost always last to safeguard any stargglers and depending on what we were doing and the adult ratio, we tried to have an adult near the lead too.

 

I've had boys show up for winter outings in tennis shoes and tube socks, had a boy who was fearless on the ski slopes who had no idea how to stop (just point downhill, go fast and crash was his method - yes I was worried he would hurtle across a mountain ridge in to the abyss), one case of hypothermia (summer camp!), burns (minor - trying ot pick up a burning log), cuts (one severe - by the SA), wasp stings (mulitple), illness (virus attacks not due to food preparation thank goodness) and heat stroke (again, one severe case that needed hospitalization but that again was for an adult). I am thankful I've always come home with the same number of Scouts I've left with. I was at Jambo where there were multiple deaths (electrocution), huge amount of heat related illness (I blame the BSA for multiple bad judgments) but other than that, no big catastrophies. My biggest worry was always a falling tree branch when hiking/camping in the woods.

 

The Times identified 32 Scouts and Scout leaders who have died in the last five years in various outdoor activities. Investigations by rangers and sheriffs have documented deaths resulting from heatstroke, falls, lightning, drowning, electrocution and burns, among other causes.

 

In many cases, adult leaders appear to have miscalculated the abilities of individual boys to handle the risks and difficulties of outdoor activities, and failed to follow Scout rules and recommendations on adult supervision, safety equipment and trip planning.

 

Andrea Lankford, who was a district ranger in Yosemite in the mid-1990s and has worked at national parks across the country, said many adult Scout leaders "are not that physically fit themselves. They are not that knowledgeable. They are complacent. They are naive about the hazards. They bite off more than they can chew. As rangers, we would be extremely concerned. I have seen it time and time again with a gamut of consequences."

 

As a Scoutmaster, I knew my strengths and weaknesses and never tried to bite off more than I could chew. We owe it to the boys to police ourselves more diligently IMO.

[Basementdweller]

Nothing new in the article.

 

Scout master are experts at all, just ask one. More and more SM's are realizing the limitations of their charges. I am going to say a truly boy troop would have been less likely to have gotten into this situation. Our youth are less and less physically fit.....blame it on Video games, unsafe neighborhoods, lazy parents and youth. It is a reality and we have to deal with it.

 

A 2700 foot vertical hike in winter is tough, that scout master was NEGLIGENT. Taking a city kid on that sort of a first hike was NEGLIGENT. It was an accident that killed the young man, but he should have never been on that mountain to begin with.

 

 

I have scouts that cannot hike 2 miles.

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

It's a fine line.

 

I came to Scouting from backpacking and glacier and rock climbing. I had a considerable depth of experience that was valuable in judging risks and dealing with problems.

 

I think it's easy for adult leaders lacking sufficient expwerience to underestimate risks and lack the experience to deal with a bad situation should it occur.

 

Perhaps doing some mock accidents and rescues as part of a troop, district or council program might be worthwhile.

 

Around Seattle, the Red Cross offer "Mountaineering Oriented First Aid" that has just this kind of mock accident situations for teams of students to deal with ---at night. I took that and benefitted from it.

 

The Seattle Mountaineers has a Basic Climbing Course that teaches the basic skills needed for climbing. The MOFA course is required and there are equipment inspections and field trips that teach rapelling and such ---- I recall being lowered about forty feet into a cravasse on Mt Rainier and then having my student team construct a pulley system to give the mechanical advantage to pull me out. Each person was lowered and pulled out in turn.

 

After you did several "basic" climbs, you then passed the course.

 

By then people has a reasonably decent idea of the skills needed to deal with the hazards involved in climbing.

 

Passing the course gave you the ability to sign up as a party member on club climbs. You needed a good deal more experience to be able to lead those climbs, and completing the intermediate climbing course was suggested as well.

[thriftyscout]

"The Times identified 32 Scouts and Scout leaders who have died in the last five years in various outdoor activities."

 

While it is easy to say one death is too many, the reality is adolescents had a death rate of 64 per 100,000 in 2006. That is just one year, with the leading causes being motor vehicle accidents, homicide, and suicide.

 

Considering the huge exposure of taking Scouts into the woods, I think the BSA's safety record is impressive. I'm not saying to ignore the warnings present in this article. We all need to take our responsibilities seriously.

 

Consider how many times you read about kids being expelled for having a pocket knife at school. Compare that to your last Scout outing, every kid has a knife, they have access to axes, hatchets, and fire. If it were a school they would send the SWAT team.

 

These kinds of things make the news due to their rarity in Scouting. Teen deaths from the MVA, homicide, and suicide hardly even make more than the local news anymore. I'm not making excuses for poor adult leadership but I don't think the BSA overall needs to apologize for its safety record.

[Pint]

A terrible tragedy, and at this time of year with Christmas approaching thoughts and prayers should go out to all those who have been affected.

 

just out of interest what type of qualification do US Scout masters require in order to take Scouts out hiking? and is there any type of permit scheme in place to authorise and show that those leading such activities are up to the job?

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

I'll relate one story of a troop snow shoe hike a few years ago.

 

 

This winter hike was in cold weather +15 to 20 degrees and 10-15 MPH winds. Along a closed and snowed in Forest Service road in a national forest. Icy conditions on the road ---no real need for the snow shoes but most people wore them.

 

We got 2+ miles in to our turnaround point where we had lunch and the Scouts did some glissading (sliding) down a suitable hill side with a run out at the road.

 

I noticed we were missing a boy out on his first outing with the troop. We did some looking around before I saw him --- he had slid down another snow slope which had several feet of soft powder snow. It was a steep slope and looked out over the great snowy beyond.

 

He couldn't get up and couldn't do more than flail around in the soft snow.

 

One of the parents wanted to take charge of extracting the boy, but I made a point of making sure that our senior Scout had the responsibility.

 

We had made a game of tying a bowline and throwing the loop to "rescue" a scout during troop meetings --- now they had a chance to see that the skill wasn't just a game.

 

The Scouts got the bowline tied and sent one Scout down on the rope about thirty feet to get the loop around the young Scout. They helped pull both boys up the hill. They did an excellent job with this practical rescue!

 

 

We hadn't done an adequate job of maintaining the buddy system and keeping an eye on the new Scout in particular. If he'd slid another ten feet or so behind some scrub pine trees, he wouldn't have been visible and hearing shouts might have been problematic.

 

Between the temperature and the wind, the weather conditions were severe.

 

 

Could have been a real problem if that boy had slid down much farther. Down hill was nothing but the great snowy Beyond.

 

It's amazing how fast you start to sweat even in cold weather when a boy is missing!

[Proud Eagle]

This is a terrible tragedy.

 

If you ever staff a summer camp at the level of one of the directors, you will get a suprising amount of updates from your Scout Exec on things that have gone wrong elsewhere, news reports forwarded by friends, Scout leaders telling you about things, and even concerned parents, members of the general public, and even media calling about things that have happened somewhere.

 

Lots of safety stuff focuses on adult leadership, but I wonder, and I am just thinking hypothetically, if perhaps the real focus for safety ought to be on the youth?

 

Maybe one of the questions we should consider standard in our planning is:

 

If any one of our patrols gets cut off from adult leaders in this activity can it survive?

 

I bet Kudu would have some ideas about this idea.

 

I once had the experience of having all the participants in a high adventure outing get seperated from the program staff in such a way that their location was unknown and there was no ready method of communication while the last light of the day was fading. We eventually found everyone safe and sound. When the staff got into a fix (mechanical problems) and had to stop the participants simply followed the plan of the day and went exactly where they were supposed to be for the night. That was a wake up call on a lot of levels. As it worked out the biggest problem was coming up with a plan B for that night's meal. That being the early days of cell phones, the clever idea was hit upon of pulling the med forms and calling people back home to try to get a cell number for a participant. Talk about a delicately phrased conversation. Eventually we got a number of someone who had their phone on and had signal. That was a huge relief. I tried to suggest a formal after action review on the incident, but that never happened, at least so far as I know.

 

That is one of my top six times I got seriously worried about something while on camp staff. The others being a fish hook in an eye (a bit of surgery and he was fine, later in the week was even back teaching has buddy how to cast properly), a severed toe(ended a kid's soccer ambitions), the time we thought my next door neighboor from back home was lost (found in wrong shower house just before sounding alarm), the time boat sank while a class was in it (rescued by a fisherman), the time a kitchen volunteer collapsed (she lived, barely, should have been a pink folder incident, but we had no SE and area didn't want to deal with it) and a major gas leak (lead to replacement of propane tanks, thankfully no big boom, did contribute 400 gals of propane to global warming).

 

Don't kid yourself folks, this Scouting stuff has risk even when everyone does the right thing and everything goes right. If someone messes up or you have bad luck those risks start going up rather quickly. There is a fine line between manageable and acceptable levels of risk, and reckless gambles.

[resqman]

"just out of interest what type of qualification do US Scout masters require in order to take Scouts out hiking? and is there any type of permit scheme in place to authorise and show that those leading such activities are up to the job?"

 

A travel permit must be filed with the local scout office listing the two primary adults and their BSA training, vehicle information, destination and some other details.

 

 

Boy Scout Volunteer Training Requirements and Electives

 

Please take time to read the following. This is a nutshell of Boy Scout Volunteer training.

 

A Scoutmaster or Assistant Scoutmaster is considered to be trained after completing (1) "Boy Scout Fast Start Training," (2) "Youth Protection Training." (3) Two-part "Boy Scout Leader Basic Training" (a. New Leader Essentials and b. Scoutmaster and Assistant Scoutmaster Leader Specific Training), and (4) "Introduction to Outdoor Leader Skills."

 

Leader Specific traning is a 1 day classroom course

IOLS is a weekend course where the student is presented every skill from T-1st in a weekend.

Other classess are available on line and take about 1/2 each.

 

[acco40]

A Scoutmaster is trained when ...

 

Yes, but he needs not have that training to take his troop on an outing!

[Basementdweller]

Did you guys actually read the article.

 

The SM was an idiot, who takes a bunch of boys on a hike like this for a first outing. waist deep snow and 2700 foot vertical climb on steep switch backs in winter???? Then they split the group, bad choices again and again.

 

 

There is no defending what happened.

 

 

 

 

 

[SeattlePioneer]

Well basement dweller,

 

Most mountaineering injuries occure because of a series of bad decisions. That's typical.

 

In the story I related earlier in the thread, I led a winter troop outing with an eleven year old on his first hike. He wound up in steep, waist deep snow and couldn't move because of it.

 

Quite a few similarities, but then we had strengths that compensated for those weaknesses, too.

 

 

Hiking in winter conditions requires training, experience and good judgment to minimize problems and to bail yourself out when things go bad.

[Basementdweller]

I read your story seattle, no unreasonable risk in my eyes. walking a seasonally closed forest service road for a 4 mile total hike on snow shoes is perfectly safe and reasonable. Far as the young man getting stuck in the snow....young men will be young men after all.

 

My point is expecting city boys(unconditioned and inexperienced) to climb that sort of vertical in winter conditions was negligent. I will go as far to guess that most of them probably did not have proper gear for the conditions. Heck, I will say that i probably don't have the gear for that sort of outing and I hike 700 miles a year.

 

 

 

 

[Eagle92]

Ok I posted some of this in the NSP thread, so please bear with me on some repitition.

 

This appeared to be a NSP doing an activity. So while you did have what should have been an experienced and knowledgable SM, you did have a bunch of first timers.

 

From the article it appears that the SM had no experienced scouts to help with the new ones. So you had scouts who didn't know about the buddy system and why it's so important. You didn't have a PL who knew that he needed to keep an eye out on his patrol. And if the scout had fallen and survived, you didn't have scouts who knew first aid and could help in rescuing and treating the scout. Could having some expereinced scout helped in this situation?

 

I know I was fortunate in that when I did a HA activity in the Canadian wilderness, the patrol members had mixed abilities. this allowed the expereinced ones to look out and help with the less expereinced ones. Before going, we had several prep trips so that everyone had a basic level of training, and could pull their own weight if needed. And yes even though I was one of the more expereinced ones who's buddy had just the basic training to go on the trip, I was the one who got hypothermia, and another experienced scout in the patrol recognized that I got hypothermia.

 

I pray for the family of this scout.