A Beach Safety Officer keeps an eye on some kids at Grand Beach in August 2016.
The rate of children ages four and under who drown in Manitoba is greater than any other province, according to a new report from the Lifesaving Society’s provincial branch.
Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 27/6/2017 (1794 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
The rate of children ages four and under who drown in Manitoba is greater than any other province, according to a new report from the Lifesaving Society’s provincial branch.
That unsettling distinction was one of several the society highlighted Tuesday, when it released its latest drowning report.
In addition to high rates among young children, its analysis showed while the rate at which Manitobans died by drowning dropped following a brief 2011 surge, the yearly average has consistently hovered around 25 for a decade.
The stagnation indicates much more needs to be done, according to the branch’s operations manager, Kevin Tordiffe.
"We need to spend more work on public educating," he said, "on advertising and making the public aware of the risks associated with being near or in water."
The society’s report formally analyzes data up to and including 2014. It relies on preliminary anecdotal data for media reports for 2015 and 2016. While drowning rates typically rise in the summer, August 2016 was a particularly deadly one, with at least four people drowning across Manitoba — two on the same day.
Early in the month, two children — 12-year-old David Medina and 11-year-old Jhonalyn Javier — drowned at Grand Beach. Later in the month, a 22-year-old University of Manitoba student drowned at Birds Hill Park, a relatively shallow artificial lake, and hours later, a 26-year-old Winnipeg man drowned in Caddy Lake (an incident police believe may have involved alcohol).
When it comes to young children, the Lifesaving Society urges constant parental supervision. If you’re around water with them, Tordiffe said, "you should be within arm's reach."
ZACHARY PRONG / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES
A helicopter takes off at Birds Hill Provincial Park after reports of a possible drowning last August.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t really change year to year, said Dr. Alecs Chochinov, medical director of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority’s emergency program.
"There are the tiny, tiny kids that slip into the bathtub and drown or kids that fall into the swimming pool, and that’s mostly a matter of ensuring that parents are on guard all the time and how do you change that?" he said.
"We can try to educate people, but we live in a society where there’s a high prevalence of social stress and those things are all contributory."
What is key, Tordiffe said, is learning how to swim. Focus less on stroke-specific swimming, he said, and more on the fundamentals.
The Lifesaving Society runs a Swim to Survive program based on decades of research into drowning.
While the program is prevalent in provinces such as Ontario, where many schools having some form of in-house swim program, Tordiffe said it isn’t in Manitoba -- where most pools are in Winnipeg and not connected with schools, making such a program potentially more costly.
At Swim to Survive, participants learn potentially life-saving skills.
The first is how to push their way to the surface after a disorienting entry (a roll). That can be crucial since 20 per cent of drowning victims weren’t actually swimming prior to their death; they were near the water doing something else: walking, running, or playing. The second skill is treading water with your head above the surface for one minute. The third is swimming 50 metres.
"It doesn’t matter how," Tordiffe stressed, it’s just about "being able to move forward in the water."
After young children, adults between the ages of 20 and 24 are at the next-highest risk for drowning in Manitoba.
For them, Tordiffe said, it boils down to risk-taking behaviour. They drink and swim or they drink and boat without a life jacket. Almost worse, he said, is they may boat with the life jacket to avoid a possible ticket but they don’t actually wear it.
"Having it with you isn’t going to save your life," Tordiffe said, "certainly not the way wearing it would."
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Chochinov is skeptical education will help with that age range. Drinking mixed with no life jacket is already dangerous, but he said, mix that with being young and male and "that’s a bad triad."
The answer, Chochinov said, is probably better enforcement.
"There’s no real significant enforcement of the use of PDFs or alcohol use with driving boats," he said, adding something similar to drunk-driving stopchecks might help.
Ultimately, Tordiffe said, it's important all people, no matter their age, recognize what risks they’re taking.
"If you can see those risks in your mind, you’re going to be better prepared for them," he said. "That includes understanding when you’re out hiking with the family near water, supervision of your kids is paramount."
jane.gerster@freepress.mb.ca
By the numbers
Children ages 0-4 have the highest drowning death rate in Manitoba, followed by adults ages 20-24, and adults ages 40-44 and 80-84;
While 39 per cent of drownings happened in lakes and 37 per cent in rivers, 10 per cent happened in ditches. In most of the latter cases, a motor vehicle left the road and entered water;
Less than one per cent of people who drowned did so in an area under the supervision of a lifeguard;
Although 72 per cent of Manitobans live in an urban centre, 68 per cent of drowning deaths occurred in rural areas;
Twenty-four per cent of people who drowned were swimming, 20 per cent were walking or running or playing near water, 15 per cent were powerboating, another 15 per cent were canoeing, and eight per cent were fishing;
The majority of drowning deaths took place in the summer months, July in particular;
Of the 24 per cent who drowned while swimming, alcohol consumption was a factor in nearly half of those cases;
Twenty-four per cent of people who drowned while swimming did not know how to swim.
-- source: Lifesaving Society (figures reflect data for 2010-14)
Drowning history in Manitoba
There have been a number of drownings in Manitoba thus far in 2017, including:
In late April, four males died during a canoe trip on the Burntwood River near Thompson. Shane Cripps and his 14-year-old son Dylan went canoeing with Conor Sykes and his six-year-old son Liam. When the foursome didn't return by the planned time, their families alerted the RCMP. After a search, a private boat found the bodies not far from a capsized canoe. Each was wearing a life jacket.
In mid-May, former Kenora, Ont., police chief Dan Jorgensen died in a kayaking incident en route to Gimli. His boat overturned in rough waters at the base of Sturgeon Falls in Whiteshell Provincial Park.
In early June, a 54-year-old woman from Oak Point died following a boating incident on Lake Manitoba that left three other people stranded overnight on the shore. Two men, ages 36 and 53, and a 37-year-old woman, all residents of the Oak Point area, were located and examined by EMS. The body of the woman was found nearby. The boat was found submerged near the shoreline.
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