On Thu, Oct 08, 1998 at 07:04:38AM -0700, Mattson, Timothy G wrote: > What is a flush drowning? I bet a number of us on the Paddlewise list would > like to know. Flush drowning is what happens is when someone manages to drown even though they're wearing a PFD and are (mostly) on the surface of the water. A victim can aspirate a large amount of water for a variety of reasons -- immersion shock, hypothermia, large waves -- when swimming in whitewater, even if their PFD is doing a reasonable job of keeping them on the surface. (Type V PFDs, like most rafting companies use, help to prevent this, but are by no means a panacea.) These tend to happen on rivers that are one or more of: cold, continuous whitewater, flood-stage, high volume, and fast. Early in my paddling career, I deliberately swam most of the rapids on the upper part of the New River (above Thurmond) just to get used to the experience. Almost without exception, those rapids feature moderate waves in wide, unobstructed channels, so they're pretty safe to swim, *if* you're wearing a PFD and *if* you remember to time your breathing to happen when you're on the surface. (The hardest part is remembering to exhale.) I did this because I'd had an experience where I took in a lot more water than I needed to while swimming a nasty, cold bit of whitewater, and because I wanted to learn how to do it under mostly-controlled conditions....and because I'd heard about flush drownings and didn't want to be one. ---Rsk Rich Kulawiec rsk_at_gsp.org *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.gasp-seakayak.net/paddlewise/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Oct 08 1998 - 10:31:26 PDT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:30:00 PDT