Safety and rowing accidents: IRN
POWER10
There is a good article that just came out in Indep. Rowing News about
collisions, near fatalities, and how we all must pay more attn to safe
procedures on our individual bodies of water and when we go to away regattas.
I certainly don't have the answers, but maybe with big regattas like HOCR, USA,
we all have to chip in some extra money to pay for ref. launches during
pre-race practice times (so crowded and hectic!!). We all have stories about
close calls, as well as actual accidents (e.g.,two boats, one distracted coxn,
oar blade hitting occipital area, 18 stitches, but no permanent impairment of
vision, etc.)The stories in IRN are frightening and and it is a true wonder
that Mr. Yasaitis is alive and well, along with Ms Laumann, despite the PTSD
pain that they must each be experiencing. I wish them and others well, with
both physical and emotional healing.
It is up to all of us, as coaches and/or rowers, to be alert and look out for
the other rower, as well as ourselves. We should all ask ourselves, (coaches),
do we review the USROWING safety guidelines/video and do we review the hazards
and peculiarities of our own body of water. After reading all the bow-ball
stuff, I certainly am going to check each and every boat, especially our older
ones, along with the 3" safety heel cord.
I wish all of you wonderful rowers and coaches a happy and safe holiday season.
And Have a Great Row!
Cordially,
Gordon L. Pizor
Head Coach & Associate Director Wilmington Youth Rowing Assn, & Dir. Head of
the Christina.
Gordon L. Pizor
Head Coach and Associate Director
Wilmington Youth Rowing Association, Inc.
WYRA
John Mulholland
news:20021129112423...@mb-bh.aol.com...
> To the rowing list members:
> There is a good article that just came out in Indep. Rowing News about
> collisions, near fatalities, and how we all must pay more attn to safe
> procedures on our individual bodies of water and when we go to away
regattas.
Any link to a web site for those of us east of the Atlantic?
John Mulholland
Hexham Rowing Club
Carl Douglas
Mulholland <John.Mu...@connectingbusiness.com> writes
to read the article please let me know. Or try emailing the editor,
Chris Millman, at: ch...@rowingnews.com.
I've just read my copy of that 19 November Independent Rowing News (an
excellent rowers' magazine, BTW.) think this article therein, by Ed
Winchester & entitled "Accidents Waiting to Happen", should be required
reading for all rowers. It is fairly low key, but what it says it says
well.
It recalls the Elk Lake, Canada, incident - 2 rowers dead after a storm
blew up unexpectedly & suddenly swamped & sank 2 eights. The rescuing
launch with half of the swimmers aboard also swamped before reaching
shore/ It was 90 minutes before the rest could be rescued, by which
time it was too late for some. Yet although rules were formulated
following this disaster & there's a mandatory accident reporting
procedure for provinces, Rowing Canada Aviron
"doesn't keep track of the number of incidents".
The article mentions RCA's director emphasising compliance with laws on
not rowing in the dark & carrying 'safety vests' - although it seems
improbable that either of these precautions would have much influenced
the Elk Lake outcome - it is being 90 minutes in cold water that kills.
In the US, City Securities which handles USRowing's insurance records a
"surprisingly low" number of reports of rowing accidents each year.
Apparently, "surprisingly low" describes 20 recorded incidents causing
actual reportable injury or worse during 2001. The article does not
report the range of types of injury. City Securities is also reported
as saying that rowing has:
"some drowning and some deaths but [considering the exposure
of those concerned] you've had an extremely safe decade".
I wonder if those now dead, or there families, quite agree with those
sentiments? Especially since their deaths were almost certainly easily
avoidable by minimal equipment improvements, such as improved shell
buoyancy, forward-view mirrors (you aren't allowed to drive without a
rear-view mirror, even though you're not driving backwards) & decent,
functioning bow protection.
Oars (which are so easily broken & give so very little support) are,
apparently, considered in the US to be 'flotation devices'. Oddly,
however, the concept of the boat itself being designed & built as an
unsinkable flotation & anti-immersion device is nowhere considered. So
in Canada, as on many US waters, rowers have to carry 'personal
flotation devices' ('life jackets', in plain English). The problems of
knowing when to put one of these things on, & the time taken to do so,
do not AFAIK get much consideration in these excessively PC times, where
what matters most is being seen to have used all the right safety words
to protect your back against lawyers, even if the outcome is still death
& greater common sense might have saved life.
BTW, Winchester reports that Yasaitis, is, fortunately, making a good
recovery with a long way yet to go. He lost 25lb - "I'm a skeleton now"
- & his wife has no plans for his return to rowing.
A couple of snippets rather relevant to the rowing safety subject at
large:
1. On UK's Radio 5 this morning, in discussing changes in sports
administration, the great Lynn Davies spoke (approximately, I was
driving at the time) these words:
"the job of officials is to serve the athletes".
What a novel concept! Anyone thought of suggesting that to the ARA
(UK), or to the IOC?
2. In today's UK Daily Telegraph is an obit on the late Ann Welch,
glider pilot & administrator extraordinaire. It says that in 1949,
following a double fatality in a recent event,
"she argued the case for self-regulation of gliding with [the]
Minister for Civil Aviation and was successful in warding off
the threat of state control, so that new clubs could proliferate
without red tape under the BGA umbrella."
Where's the similar integrity & leadership in British rowing which will
demonstrate rowing's fitness to manage its own safety affairs? Under
present admin & attitudes the ARA is demonstrably unfit to do so. In
which case UK rowing will rightly be seen as the safety basket case that
it is, & rules will be state-imposed.
It is up to us.
Cheers -
Carl
Carl Douglas Racing Shells -
Fine Small-Boats/AeRoWing low-drag Riggers/Advanced Accessories
Write: The Boathouse, Timsway, Chertsey Lane, Staines TW18 3JY, UK
Email: ca...@carldouglas.co.uk Tel: +44(0)1784-456344 Fax: -466550
URLs: www.carldouglas.co.uk (boats) & www.aerowing.co.uk (riggers)
Tony Curran
>
> It recalls the Elk Lake, Canada, incident - 2 rowers dead after a storm
> blew up unexpectedly & suddenly swamped & sank 2 eights. The rescuing
> launch with half of the swimmers aboard also swamped before reaching
> shore/ It was 90 minutes before the rest could be rescued, by which
> time it was too late for some. Yet although rules were formulated
> following this disaster & there's a mandatory accident reporting
> procedure for provinces, Rowing Canada Aviron
> "doesn't keep track of the number of incidents".
> The article mentions RCA's director emphasising compliance with laws on
> not rowing in the dark & carrying 'safety vests' - although it seems
> improbable that either of these precautions would have much influenced
> the Elk Lake outcome - it is being 90 minutes in cold water that kills.
>
I have mentioned this incident on more than one occasion. One youth
disappeared beneath the waves and his body was recovered a few days later.
He may well have benefited from a personal floatation device. The second
died in hospital a couple of days later. A PFD wouldn't have helped.
And still we wait....
Tony
Ottawa RC
carl
> To be clear, the men who died from the incident with UVic tried to swim to shore instead of staying with the boat.
>
Please may we have the full details of this incident? Which incident
was it, when & where, & why has it come up today with the only reference
being to correspondence of 18 years ago?
Please note that, too easily & too often, the drowned rower is accused
by people who were not there (& some who want the event swept under the
carpet because it impairs the image of rowing as a safe sport or
reflects poorly on their own attitudes to rowing safety) of "swimming
away from the boat". Perhaps those who make such accusations should
button their lips?
In almost every such case of which I am aware, either the swimmer became
separated from the boat by wind & waves, or clung to a boat while
rapidly losing their grip & ability to swim due to the inexorable onset
of hypothermia & then just slipped away. And in those circumstances
even the most rational of people, beyond desperate under the duress of
advancing hypothermia, may grasp at the broken straw of striking out for
the shore. Which puts such accusations of "swimming away" into a
perspective not well understood by those who've never had to face such a
situation.
Without knowing more of the incident to which Seancleyland refers, or
why he has raised it here & now, I should note that it took a few of us
in the UK 10 hard years, fighting against deliberate & sometimes
malicious official obstruction, to get full buoyancy mandated for all
rowing shells - so that swamping in foul conditions does _not_ result in
the crew of an eight or four having to swim & cling on to a swamped boat
in cold waters. It is not rocket science to make a shell fully-buoyant.
It is, however, sheer irresponsibility to blame the victims when the
governing bodies of their sport knew full well that every rower might
die just because their shells lacked sufficient enclosed internal volume
when swamped to support its seated crew, able still to row,
I will guess you are not referring to the awful event last week on Lake
Muskoka, N. Ontario, in which a sculler was run down & killed by a
jetski carrying driver & passenger?
https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/toronto-man-killed-in-crash-on-lake-muskoka-1.5014292
Elsewhere I have likened this use of a jetski on a public-access
recreational lake with established uses for such as rowing, canoeing &
sailing to racing a motorbike with pillion around a public park used by
pedestrians & picnickers. It seems an unbelievably selfish &
self-entitled piece of arrogant tomfoolery, of which we nowadays see far
too much. Now a good man is dead.
Carl
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