Dave Seng began his last post, "one thing that was very forcefully drilled into my thick skull as a beginning whitewater paddler was that "low-head" dams are drowning machines." To back this up, the course that Gerry Dworkin teaches on Water Rescue has a really unpleasant amateur video of an incident at a low-head in New England, where a rescue craft approaches a dam to retrieve a PFD lost the day before during an attempted rescue in which a couple of people --- including, if I remember correctly --- a rescue worker. The fire captain was standing in the back of this work boat, one rescue worker kneeling in the bow, and one rescue worker on the controls. It was bow heavy, and inched its way to try to recover the PFD --- what the hell were these people thinking! --- when the boat flipped. You can watch in the video as this maytag just whips the hell out of these three guys, eventually taking two of three. Low-heads are most definitely drowning machines! Jack Martin *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Wed Jul 05 2000 - 20:25:14 PDT
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