An accident

In the news yesterday a person drowned in the Beinan river. A teacher had decided to take twenty of his students swimming there, and a girl somehow got sucked into a whirlpool. She struggled and screamed, and a man leapt in to save her. He managed to do so, kudos to him, but he was sucked down and was drowned instead.

One of my students apparently regularly goes swimming in rivers. I asked her "Where do you find whirlpools? Where do they appear?" She didn't know, and neither did anyone else in the class. "What do you do if you get caught in a whirlpool?""Pray.""Say goodbye.""Relax and make my peace with god.""Scream."

So I taught them. I showed them where you find whirlpools, how water moves around rocks, how eddies are formed, what happens in a waterfall. Most whirlpools in rivers occur when a major tributory joins a river. It smashes through and hits the far wall, and it can get confused and go upstream, downsteam, up, down, anywhere. Where the water is confused like that, you can get whirlpools. Waterfalls are similar although opposite: it's water falling down not sucking down. You still get the same washing machine effect though.I taught them what do do if they're caught in one. Swim like bloody buggery and try to get out. But if you can't... then compose yourself, take a really big breath and go with it. It's like a rip, if you fight it you can wear yourself out and then you're in the same place only exhausted. The water will take you down and tumble you about. Protect your head. If you get knocked unconscious then you're helpless and you'll start breathing which is really bad if you're underwater. But the water wants to go somewhere, and it will spit you out. Somewhere. Eventually. But if you hold your breath and keep your wits then maybe you can do something, like grab the rock wall and pull yourself downstream. THEN swim up.

I think I got a bit angry. :)

They were amazed I knew so much about this. Of course, in New Zealand if you do any kind of dangerous sport, then it's encouraged for you to do safety courses and first aid courses and learn what you need to know if things go bad. And people want to teach other people, because often the teachers are the ones who go on Search and Rescue missions.

But why didn't the teacher know this? Why didn't he teach his students this? Why didn't he teach them what the dangers are, and where to find them? Why didn't he teach them what to do? Why didn't they have life vests, or at the very least, a rope!? And if he didn't know, then why on earth did he take twenty students there to go swimming?

Rivers are wonderful places, they are beautiful, essential and fragile. They can also be bloody deadly. When we go there, we need to respect them, and be responsible for ourselves. Pick up our litter. Do a first aid course. Do a water safety course. It's because people fail to do this that we have police telling surfers "you can't do this today because it's dangerous" even though surfers know the sea, the beaches and themselves better than anyone else. If they allow surfers, maybe an idiot with no idea of the sea will take 20 schoolchildren swimming in a typhoon.