With high temperatures driving people toward beaches and pools for relief, Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project Executive Director Dave Benjamin offered warnings about water safety.
“No one plays in fire, yet everyone knows a survival tactic. Everyone plays in water, but very few people know a water survival tactic. So that should be the alarm bell ringing. We need water safety education in schools,” Benjamin told the Valparaiso Noon Kiwanis Club on Wednesday.
“Four out of five drownings are male,” he said. “We are more likely to take risks, more susceptible to peer pressure and naturally overestimate our abilities.”
Females estimate their swimming ability with almost 100% accuracy, but males overestimate their ability by about 50%.
“People who know how to swim drown at a higher rate than people who don’t know how to swim,” he said.
“We want everyone to know how to swim and know their abilities,” Benjamin said. If you don’t swim laps when you’re in the pool, you’re a wader, not a swimmer.
Guys tend to cannonball into the water, play catch with a ball, play volleyball or other games. They rarely swim more than 10 strokes at a time as they’re fetching the ball.
“For 80% of Americans who say they know how to swim, they couldn’t swim the length of a pool in calm water,” Benjamin said.
Knowing your limits is important, especially in a lake.
The southern end of Lake Michigan is the most dangerous spot on the Great Lakes, he said. As of Thursday, there have been 29 drownings in the Great Lakes so far this year, 14 of them in Lake Michigan.
Part of that is because of the sheer number of people. The Chicago metropolitan area, which extends into southeast Wisconsin and Northwest Indiana, has more than 9.4 million people.
But the shape of the lake and wind conditions also play a role. Depending on the wind conditions, a person can be pushed out into the lake or shoved along in a rip current.
“If you’re in open water, there can be wind, there can be waves,” Benjamin said.
A person in trouble in the water panics. “Water safety is not common sense,” Benjamin said. He knows this from experience.
Before he founded the Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, he was surfing offshore at Hammond when the nose of his surfboard dipped. Benjamin landed flat on his back, the waves continually pushing him underwater. The Velcro attaching his ankle to the surfboard tether had given way.
“Now I’m in instant panic, fighting for my life,” he said.
“You have to fight the urge to inhale and breathe,” Benjamin said.
“I’m going under, accepting that this is it, I’m going to pass out of this life,” he said. When he stopped struggling, his buoyant surf suit took him to the surface.
“My 40 years of swimming experience at the time, my surfing experience, didn’t matter,” Benjamin said.
“After that incident, I would eventually dedicate my life to water safety.”
“Since I could crawl, my parents had me on water.” He had swimming lessons through the Park Forest Aqua Center and the YMCA.
“Every summer of my life, I’m going on 56 years now, I’ve been swimming in Lake Michigan.”
And drownings continue to occur.
Benjamin updated his slide presentation Tuesday. His graph showed 1,445 Great Lakes drownings since 2010. It was already out of date the next day. A boat mishap on Lake Erie sent five people into the water, and one of them drowned.
After leaving Valparaiso, Benjamin was headed to Port Sheldon, Michigan, where two drownings occurred June 13.
It was a bachelor party weekend. That Saturday, at about 1 p.m., the young men were playing volleyball on the beach when one of the guys jumped off the pier to cool off. He got in trouble, and a buddy on the same football team jumped in to rescue him.
“They just didn’t know about the basics of water safety, and they perished,” Benjamin said.
Another sad tale was Keegan Roberts, 13, who died in Lake Michigan at Michigan City on June 21.
“Yellow flags were flying all day,” Benjamin said, and conditions were continuing to deteriorate. The lifeguards had gone off duty 45 minutes earlier.
Roberts attended Barker Middle School, where Benjamin has often taught water safety. This year, however, the program didn’t occur because of a lack of funding.
The World Health Organization calls drowning a neglected public health issue. Benjamin agrees.
“We need to understand research statistics on who’s drowning and why,” he said. The Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project, at glsrp.org/statistics/, recaps the drownings that have occurred so far this year.
Wednesday wasn’t Benjamin’s first visit to the Valparaiso Noon Kiwanis Club.
“When I was here before, drowning was the leading cause of unintentional deaths of children ages 1 to 4,” he said. Now it’s the leading cause of death for children that age.
“You can’t put them in a life jacket or puddle jumper and expect them to be safe,” he said.
“If it’s an Amazon package on the porch, you’ve got to leave it” because that much time away from the tub can result in a young child drowning.
Do neighbors have a hot tub or a pool in their yard? Even a 5-gallon bucket can cause a drowning death.
If you see someone in the water, don’t go in after the person, Benjamin advised. Reach out to them to pull them to safety. If they’re too far, throw a life ring – Indiana law requires them to be on beaches – and pull them to shore.
Once ashore, remember that five rescue breaths are needed as well as chest compressions when performing CPR. A near-drowning victim doesn’t have the oxygen in the lungs that chest compressions alone would help with, Benjamin said.
The Great Lakes Surf Rescue Project offers training for lifeguards as well as anyone else who might need training in water safety.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
