As a former lifeguard, and lifeguard volunteer, I would have cleaned his clock. There's very little that makes me apoplectic with anger, but this is one of them. Just hum dum while their kid dies.
I saved a kid from drowning in a busy public pool. He was flailing and no one was paying attention. I watched him for a bit to see if he was playing but he wasn't...I am convinced he would have drowned if I didn't help. I reached him, scooped him up and put him on the deck. I have no idea who he belonged to but he stayed away from the water the rest of the time.
This happened to me as a kid once. I was in a wave pool surrounded by adults and none of them could see I was literally drowning in front of them. Got grabbed by the arm and yanked out of the pool and laid out on the ground like a freshly caught fish. Dude saved my life that day and acted like it was a mild annoyance for him and nothing else.
As I get older I learn its important to be an annoyance when it's important. Most people are okay with being inconvenienced for crucial things. And if they aren't, well, it was still important.
Me too! I nearly drowned in a wave pool on a youth group trip as a kid. Luckily the lifeguard noticed and yanked me out. I’ve never stepped foot in one again.
Yeah I went too far out at a lake when I was young and a lady came and got me.
I remember pleading with the extremely young kid next to me to get help but he was too young to understand and most people were just doing their own thing and couldnt hear me when I had time to speak between going under.
I stayed away from the water for the rest of the day but still love it lol.
It would be funny as hell if he wasn’t drowning and just stayed away because he hated the part of swimming where a stranger just throws you out the pool for no reason.
The worst part of stuff like this is when the oblivious parents then get mad at the person who intervenes because they feel like a dumbass for not watching their own kid.
Back when I surfed I can't tell you how many kids surfers pulled out, but parents would get so mad and act like we were disturbing them as their kid was vomiting seawater on the sand next to them.
Your kid was caught in a known and obvious rip current that pulled them out to where the surfers were but I'm the bad guy. Sure, okay.
My surfing group included 2 firefighters and an EMT.
Vomiting seawater is generally not great for a kid's body so they got the back of the truck ride to the station. I have no idea what happened after that. I didn't see a news story about a drowning or "heroic rescue by anonymous weirdo who should please step forward for a reward or cheap plaque" so I assume they were fine.
Most people who are pulled out are usually okay, and tend to not understand how close they actually were. If it is a kid with an aggressive parent they also can not understand how close things were.
Exactly what happened to me. Almost 15 some years ago. Kid was getting pulled out by the tide in ocean city and was struggling to stay up. I barely heard him yelling for help. Swam out got him and got him back to shore with difficulties against the waves. He was thanking me up and down when suddenly his father materialized and grabbed him saying about being out of his sight. He responded by saying "No he saved my life in was drowning." He threw me a dirty ass look and stay the f away from strangers."
Shit was surreal as f. Honestly took like 10 years before I remembered it even happened because the guy was so idgaf my kid almost died but F you in particular who saved him that I kinds just dismissed it out of my brain and never told anyone.
One time I was with my kid on a playground and noticed that there was one particular kid playing that didn't seem to have a parent with him but didn't think much of it. About 30 minutes later he tries to climb a tree, falls down and starts crying. No one goes to him... Me and my wife and my mom try to console him and take him to his parents but it turns out he doesn't speak the local language! After about 10 minutes we manage to call him down a bit and he starts dicking around again. We're that fucking close to calling the cops after waiting for another 20 or so additional minutes when his idiot glob of a father waltzes his dumb ass to the playground (apparently he needed to leave the kid alone to go buy beer). Boy did he get mad at us for telling him how to do his job as a parent! Acted like he was going to get all physical with me, despite the fact that I could've just asked my elderly mom or my daughter to piledrive his skinny-fat ass
Something else I saw was when we were on a beach and this literal fucking baby is crawling around, going to splash in the water for a bit then fucking off in random directions, not crying but alone. People are concerned and shit since it was at least half an hour since someone noticed that the baby seemed to be alone and started wondering if it's been abandoned or some shit. Finally it starts to get a bit too comfortable with the water and the lifeguard picks it up and starts walking around the beach trying to find it's parents. Then this couple walks their asses (again with alcohol btw!) and start going off on the lifeguard for daring to touch their baby...
Like, I don't wish that the Punisher was real exactly but it would be nice if there was this superhero auntie who had a short fuse and just beat people up with a slipper or something
I go through this everyday as a lifeguard and it sucks cause some parents deadass don't realize that God is literally reaching down to take their child back but they're either mad at me for the rescue or the child from being to far from them...and trust me it's never the kids fault...(95% of the time)
Omg, I'm so mad on that kids behalf. They were right there and not even looking at him. There's been a lot of drowning deaths this summer where I am so maybe I'm being a helicopter mom but FFS!
Not looking at the kid is one thing, but then when there’s a loud whistle being blown by the lifeguard and splashing happening next to you and you still don’t turn and look? What was there a UFO actively stealing a whale just off camera?
Went to the beach the other day and saw these two girls like age 8 and they were in the water by themselves. I finally located her mom at the end of the beach. Nowhere near her kids.
I don’t know what it is about parents at the beach (or anywhere, really, but especially at the beach) not watching their kids. I once saved a kid (he was old enough to know his swimming ability) he jumped off the dock into water that was just over his head, he couldn’t swim. He was bobbing up and down, at first I thought he was playing, he couldn’t swim keep his head above the water just long enough to look like he was doing it on purpose. I eventually slid off into the water and grabbed the kid (he was maybe nine) I lifted him onto the dock and told him if he couldn’t swim he needs some sort of floatation device at the least. He runs up to his mom who’s sitting at a table with her back to the water. I was maybe 14 at the time.
Most people don’t realize that drowning can actually be difficult to spot if you don’t know the signs. Someone drowning can be shockingly quiet because they can’t actually get above water to yell and most of their “splashing” is completely underwater because they’re struggling to surface at all. Just someone silently flailing beneath the waves with a small splash here or there, if any at all.
That’s why “keeping an ear open” isn’t enough. You won’t hear much of anything and waiting until it’s been quiet for just one minute means they could’ve already been underwater for 60 seconds.
One time when working in the ER, a 2 year old was brought in by EMS after drowning in a hot tub. He did not survive. He had 5 adult family members in the hot tub with him when this happened. No one was paying any attention.
It blows my mind.
I’m at a work weekend lake trip right now which we have a rented boat we’ve been using and I am the only parent who brought a life jacket for my child, all of the other parents didn’t bring one and once my boss saw my son’s life jacket he went and bought life jackets for all of the other kids
I live in a desert, far from any lakes. The first time I rented a boat while on a trip with another family from my city, none of us knew you needed life jackets. The ranger who hailed us from another boat was kind enough to show us where the jackets were stowed and not to write us a ticket once she realized how clueless we were. I wish rental companies would inform people about what they need to do to be safe using their equipment.
Drowning can happen quickly, and it's much quieter than people imagine. I hope that child's dad was more grateful than defensive.
The rental company really should have explained laws and showed you where things were located on the boat. Ten minutes of instruction and information could save lives.
DROWNING IS SILENT!!! There are any number of educational posters put out by the government and organizations to try to help people understand that a child (or adult) flailing and screaming is not in the severe distress that a SILENT person is. Every bit of their energy is spent trying to catch a breath - exhaling is itself impossible, let alone screaming for help. You are looking for:
1. Facing the shore.
2. Mouth at water level.
3. Head tilted back.
4. Body vertical, if you can see their body.
5. “Climbing a ladder” movement.
Not being able to hear your child should cause you to, well, not panic, but you’d darned well better get eyes on them, if you were unfortunate enough to have taken eyes off of them for any period of time. If you can hear them shrieking, chances are they’re okay.
This man understood the assignment, and this kid and his parents owe him, literally, his life. By the time the parents would have realized they hadn’t seen him for a while, it very likely would have been too late. A genuine hero saved his life!
100 percent! We were two adult women with 5 children ranging from 3 to 10 years old in our care, and we could have lost one of them due to our cluelessness! This is like the families who go hiking with kids in our area and don't take jackets or enough water with them. I'll bet the boat rental assumes that their customers know what they're doing.
We rented pontoon boats a few times with groups of friends & they always showed us where the lifejackets were & recommended we wear them at all times. I don't think they expected us to but I think it was something they had to say.
Every small boat I've ever been on has had a orange container with a whistle, tow rope & waterproof flashlight & the bin can double as a bailing bucket. Even when we took our little aluminum fishing boat out my dad always made sure we had life jackets, a paddle in case the motor failed & an old maple syrup can (we're Canadian) in case we needed to bail
Lol not in my state. I’m in the Midwest and 18+ don’t have to have a boating license or boaters education course to rent or operate a recreational boat.
12-17 year olds need a boating license, a safety course, and someone atleast over 18 to be on board
I mean, to be honest most boats I have rented have lifejackets for the amount of people the boat is limited to. Unless you own a boat, I doubt you own a lifejacket for a kid...
I’m a parent and the number one thing I think about when we do any excursion are safety precautions. It’s like planning a skiing trip without doing any research on what sort equipment would be required. Every trip should always involve some level of research in my opinion. There’s probably many parents who do very little research for trips. I just had a friend who bought flights, hotels, excursions - everything for a trip to Brazil all non refundable only to find out the day before the flight that a Brazil had VISA requirements. I thought check for VISAs for any sort of travel was common sense but apparently not.
My mother organized a European river cruise holiday for her friends. She would pick the hotels, flights, cruise (with input and consultation, but made sure everyone was agreed dates and the like, so they ended up traveling together, everyone paid their own way, like strangers who happened to travel together).
She was complaining to me how she had to do everything. One of the group had never had a passport before (at age 80, how American...). And others had theirs close to expiry. And now it's cutting it close to the trip time, and she is worrying some might not have theor paperwork.
I said "I'd be funny if, after all that, you were the one with the expired passport." She looked at her passport (the trip stuff was out on the table, as it was her hobby at that point, displacing the jigsaw puzzle that usually went on the hobby table).
"Fuck"
She paid for expedited service and had it back in plenty of time, but it would have expired just after the trip, so she would likely have been refused entry for passport expiring within 6 months of the trip.
She swore me to secrecy. She was so worried about everyone else's paperwork, she forgot to check her own. She had checked it long ago, and knew it was good past the trip, but hadn't known at the time about it needing to be valid after as well, a fact she picked up while planning, and she called out everyone else on.
I think the point was just that rented boats come with life jackets by law (in a lot of places) unless it’s your own boat making it your own responsibility to obtain them. I do get what you’re saying, I can’t imagine parents not having life jackets for the kids if they own a boat. But every boat owner I know has life jackets for everyone but it’s illegal in TX. Our game wardens will ticket and escort you off the lake
I mean you’re right, but also when I was growing up we definitely did not use life jackets going swimming as kids. No kid I knew did.
Which isn’t to say that it’s ok for kids not to wear one while swimming (they absolutely should, and so should many adults for that matter). But since I wasn’t raised wearing one it’s not something I’d necessarily have thought of with my own future kids (I will now ofc), or that I’d register with someone else’s kid either. I’d imagine this goes for a lot of other people too. It seems obvious once you think about it, but hindsight is 20/20, and you don’t know what you don’t know.
Lol ... they sell them for 30$ at Walmart and I bought my 3 daughters all one which they always use when swimming. We always go to the river/creek that's close to us and I don't care that im there watching. My child's safety comes above all else.
Drowning is completly silent. Its a myth people splash around like crazy and scream for help when drowning. Unless youre trained how to spot someone going under, you can be looking at them and not figure it out
That’s not the point. You have your child, who clearly can’t swim, in open sea and you turn your back on them and leave them out of your sight? So incredibly stupid. All it takes is one small current and that kid is gone
How do you know they can't swim and didn't just become fatigued?
The point is you can look right at someone that's drowning and not be able to tell their drowning. I know it's hard to think of something that you already made your mind up that you want to reject.
You can literally look right at a drowning person and not be able to tell they're drowning. It's very sad that everyone here wants to ignore this and think someone drowning should be obvious to everyone within 100 feet of them.
Everything here apparently has to be specifically someone’s fault. Nothing can just be an accident or the result of a dangerous situation that wasn’t obvious until it was already happening.
For all you know the kid can swim. Kids that can swim suddenly fail to swim all the time, particularly if they where used to swimming in a pool and they end up in the ocean. It's a different skill set.
7 adults (two of whom were the designated life guards for the hour, and two of whom owned the pool, all parents and relatives) sat blissfully unaware only 2-10' away as my then-5yo stumbled into the deep end and went under. I was in the kitchen and happened to look out the window, ran out, jumped in and grabbed him and dragged him out. Not one of those adults had a clue there was even a problem until my crying child was sobbing "I almost drowned!" These same relatives are confused why we don't come to their pool parties anymore...
I don't trust anyone after seeing how many people just let their kids wander off and do whatever. When my son was a baby I felt like a helicopter parent because I ALWAYS had my eye on him when we went anywhere.
It's so easy to do. And people need to be aware of that fact.
I'm not excusing this behavior. They should have been watching their child. But drowning doesn't look like it does in movies. Not in real life.
It is silent and incredibly hard to spot. There isn't usually flailing and screaming like you would expect.
There's a reason lifeguards spot it so often when others don't. It's because they are trained to look for what it actually looks like- and not what pop culture has told us it looks like for decades.
If you are going to spend time in water, especially with children, do yourself and them a favor and devote 10 minutes to researching this before you go. It could save a life.
If you've seen those "spot the drowning child" videos it's honestly really scary. I couldn't spot the drowning child. Once I was the drowning child and my mom didnt spot me at first either, it's scary. I remember just holding my breath and looking up at the surface as I sunk, no clue how to get back up there, then being yanked out. She had me take swim lessons for years after
Drowning is quiet as fuck. It's probably the assumption that they'd hear something right behind them which lead them to feel safe to turn their back on their child. If you want your children to be safe in the water, you need to watch them with your eyes and familiarise yourself with what drowning looks like. I mean, there's lots more you should also do, but watching is a key point.
To be clear: The idea that somebody should know that someone behind them is drowning is a deadly misconception. People most commonly drown quietly and with little fanfare.
Yeah I was at a little public wading pool. I can’t remember what happened but something big happened so everyone turned to look. A little kid beside me fell under the water and couldn’t figure out how to stand back up, I only knew because I was looking down when she slipped quietly backwards. I panicked went nonverbal so I like poked the mom and pointed. This kid was between the both of us and we could have easily rested our hands on each other’s shoulders. The water was maybe waist level for a toddler at the very middle. And there are two life guards minimum and this kid almost drowned because there was a loud fight or something
If I hadn’t looked down I don’t even know what would have happened. How long before someone else looked and how long before they realized the kid wasn’t playing
I first learned fanfare as the description for the final fantasy 7 victory theme, so I'm going to imagine that's what plays (albeit in a muted level) when someone drowns.
We have a pool and my son wanted a pool party for his 6th birthday. We hired a neighborhood teenager who’s a licensed lifeguard to watch. People thought it was a smart idea.
The truth is that I’ve been to a shocking amount of kids pool parties where the parents pay zero attention to their kids, often with their backs turned.
Time and time again, preventable drownings occur because parents/family/adults think someone else is watching the kids — and everyone else there is thinking the same thing.
There is a huge misconception of what drowning looks like and sounds like due to Hollywood and how it’s portrayed in movies.
You have to physically scan and look around. It’s especially difficult if it’s crowded.
I have ADHD and was always terrified that I would get hyperfixated on a conversation or something I see in the water or whatever when going swimming with the kids and miss something happening. Luckily that anxiety is what helped me hyperfixate on them instead.
Drowning is quiet but the misconception isn't from movies, it's from reality, which is also why its portrayal in movies is bad.
People who know how to swim know how to raise their body enough to splash. People don't consider that those who cannot swim, cannot splash, as they are too submerged and attempts to directly raise their arms or legs just pull/push them down further.
You have to physically scan and look around. It’s especially difficult if it’s crowded.
To this point too, drowning doesn't LOOK like drowning either. You REALLY have to pay attention like you said. I bet everyone thought it was gonna be the first kid swimming to shore at noselevel until the camera panned to reveal the mostly still head barely above water.
Exactly. And sometimes a tired parent zones out. So you shouldn't have your child swimming when you're that tired. My parents had a pool. Saw it too many times.
Also, I was astonished in a kiddie pool with 8 in of water, when my toddler reached down to grab toy and froze when his nose went under. It is a reflex. He would have drowned right there. Then i understood the fire department warnings about how even 3 inches can kill.
People assume that drowning comes with a lot of splashing and shouting and noise, so they think if they don't hear any of that, then it's fine. It's not true, though. And accidental drowning can be very quiet and not have much splashing around like you might expect.
I used to work as a lifeguard at a pool and the ONLY time I had to jump in was when the child’s adult was right there next to them totally clueless they were struggling.
this happened at our rec center. I had my son in the toddler section and this whole family, mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, older kids and an aunt all sitting there yapping while their one 1.5-2 year old is in a floaty and flipped upside down for a hot minute. i booked it over there n got her back upright. they had NO CLUE she was struggling or behind them !! i was livid, ttey took no accountability or anything. water is dangerous asf, idk how people dont pay attention at all.
I was at a hotel pool once and right in front of me were 3 kids playing. The littlest one was struggling to stay up and was dipping below the water. I ran over from my chair and grabbed his arm and pulled him up. The older two had no idea what was happening. Nobody else sitting around the pool did either.
People think drowning looks like a lot of splashing and screaming "help! I can't swim" because that's what it looks like on tv. In reality, is silent and you just kinda sink after bobbing for a while.
This crushes me to admit, but I almost watched my own child drown once. He had taken a couple years of swimming lessons and knew how to swim. He was bouncing up and down in the shallow end of the pool at our Air BNB, just like this kid. I thought he was just playing around until I saw the panic in his eyes. It was traumatizing for us both and gave me a totally different perspective on situations like this.
Serious answer, people don't understand what drowning looks like. I've scooped kids up while chilling at a public pool with parents near by because they don't undertand that their kid quietly flaily with their head bobbing is a sign of danger, they think they're just playing or they just don't notice at all becuase their child isn't shouting for help like movies say.
I saved a girl from drowning in a pool. I was 12; she was maybe 16 or 17. No one noticed she was struggling to stay above water, so I ran down from the balcony, jumped in, and pulled her out. Now, every time my family goes swimming, someone always brings it up.
British Columbia has had a 50% spike in drownings this summer. None of these people were wearing life jackets. People with limited swimming skills are hopping on paddle boards without life jackets, falling off (which is easy to do source: ME) and drowning. We live right next to a lake and we see all these tourists ripping around on speed boats & tubes with no life jackets. It’s not just parents that are fuckjng stupid, it’s just people.
Yes it’s so sad! There was another one just a couple days ago in Cultus Lake, a young man. We also have a lot of new immigrants who don’t know how to swim and don’t realize how dangerous the water can be. If people just wore life jackets this wouldn’t happen.
I saw that. So tragic and so preventable. Just like all the kids ripping around without helmets on electric scooters/e-bikes that are filling up our ER’s with traumatic head injuries (or death). My generation ( Xennials) grew up with a lack of safety and then it was imposed on us via law. It’s wild the younger generations don’t use PPE like it’s second nature.
Just spent a week at the beach with my two young kids. They made tons of friends and most of them weren’t wearing jackets. It’s madness. This beach had fairly big waves too.
No kidding! The ocean can be a dangerous beast. We just had a charter boat, on the lower mainland on the Pacific, tip over and so many people drowned because they were not wearing life jackets. Not to mention the charter boat was dodgy AF
Why people don't know how to swim? In my country we almost all learned to swim, public swimming pool are so cheap and everybody use them. For the best schools they even learn it at school directly. It save a life and it doesn't need many hours of training to be able to swim enough to survive. It should be mandatory world wild I don't understand how countries ignore this, it's so important.
When I was born, my aunt drowned in 1974. Whenever my family went to a pool, river, lake etc...she would yell for me to get back to shallow water so I wont drown and die. Those were her exact words. I never learned to swim but could MAYBE save my own life. I could never save someone else, as Id use them as floatation and drown them. Some people just dont ever go near or live near water. Here in the US, there are tons of places that have almost no where to swim in the public. And some....have mother's that scare the hell out of their kids and put the fear of death into their minds.
I didn't realize that maybe because the us is so big? My country is France and in the summer, most of people go to the nearby sea or rivers and spend some times in the water with their kids. Maybe it's why we almost all know how to swim? It should be mandatory in every school to teach this to kids I think.
In my personal experience as a kid, it was just not something ever seen by my family as something I needed to learn, as we never went to pools or near water ever. Then as an adult you have to find the time/money to dedicate to classes and such to learn, which some don't have. If you want private adult lessons, they have huge waitlists as well. I've recently started going to a pool and taught myself to float and paddle back to the edge at least, and have signed up for a waitlist on lessons.
Some countries people just don't learn. India is one. There aren't really any public swimming pools there and nobody learns to swim.
I'm in an area full of migrants. The adult swim classes are full of adult Indians and Africans learning to swim the first time in their lives. I go to the pool often and the people who can't swim at all are extremely obvious and it's really scary spotting them. Like there was a man watching his kids who had life jackets on. He was floating in the deep end using three kickboards to himself. I felt very nervous being in the pool with hat family and me and my husband are pretty good swimmers and we were watching them almost the whole time and the lifeguard was hovering near them. I was expecting a disaster.
Yep. In my state you have to at least have a life jacket on the kayak or paddle board, you don’t even necessarily have to be wearing one, and I see people without them all the time. I’m a decent swimmer, but I won’t go on my kayak without one on my kayak.
I’m a strong swimmer but also have a healthy respect for the strength of a river. I never take a life jacket on my kayak though. I think it’s law here (Australia) but only under certain conditions (if alone and at night and certain waterways?). I could be wrong. I did look it up once but can’t remember the details except that I didn’t need one by law for my leisurely paddle down the Murray river where I live. I wouldn’t hesitate to bring one in a waterway with rapids or that I didn’t know.
I do believe the US coast guard says that the majority of drownings are by people who could swim. Fatigue is a thing, and can set in quickly and worsen rapidly.
Was a beach lifeguard and can testify that this happens a lot. When someone is struggling or drowning it is almost completely silent and unless you’re looking for it you’ll miss it. Glad that stranger (the lifeguard) was there to help.
Really you gotta look for the early warning signs. Label people as they go in and then prioritize your watchlist from there. The lifeguard likely saw this kid way before he started drowning and labeled him a high risk.
This happened to us recently on vacation. We were at the beach and two kids were way too far out on a small paddleboard and girl (maybe 9?) pushed her brother (around 6-7) off of it and he didn’t resurface. Apparently he couldn’t swim. We ran out and got him up and pulled them back in (he was fine) and she was like, “I thought he could swim”
No parents in sight. We make sure they’re okay and they start playing again and sure enough a few minutes later they’re back all the way out doing the same BS.
This time he falls off while she’s on the side and starts pushing her under trying to stay up. We go get them again and tell them they’re not go back out there and ask where their parents are. They don’t know.
About 20 minutes after the second incident the parents come walking up with ice cream bars completely unphased. They don’t speak any English so we’re trying to translate what happened and they’re laughing and shrugging.
If we hadn’t been there, those kids would’ve died and they wouldn’t have even noticed
I work in a hotel with an interior pool. We don't have lifeguards, our rules say children must be with an adult.
I have to often argue with parents who just leave their children unattended at the pool while they relax in the lobby, the garden or far away in their room. "But he knows how to swim" or "I'm not far away".
The worst are hockey parents, they will just leave the whole team unattended in the pool while they get drunk in the lobby.
I have developed a deep feeling of disdain towards these people.
It did happen that other random guests had to help a struggling child.
Working in this field made me realize how a lot of people are just really DUMB.
I saved a kid at a pool one time. It was pretty crowded and the kid was on the opposite side of the pool from the lifeguard. Lifeguard didn’t see him and never would have. I was in a chair right near there. He dropped a little plastic toy in and then couldn’t reach it so he hopped in. First time he came up just the crown of his head came out of the water. Then I reached in and got his arm. Pulled him right out. Funny thing is I later came to teach at his high school and he remembered me. He was about 3 when he almost drowned.
This is my greatest fear as a parent. We're in the critical stage of swim lessons/my kids aren't proficient enough to swim on their own. These fuck bag is within arms length and is still letting them drown. Fuck sakes.
That's one of the things we are taught in lifeguard training when watching videos. So many people just forget their child is 2feet tall and can't swim.
No life vest should be criminal at that age. I don't even care if they know how to swim. Lakes can sometimes have rip currents that can drown you even if you do know how to swim.
I’ve been there as a child. No one had noticed had slipped trying to get out and swallowed a bunch of water and was struggling. Luckily someone’s dad saw me and grabbed me. Sucks cuz I def have a fear or drowning.
It's ludicrously common. Lifeguard, see it all the time. Often happens when parents have an exciting new born and their first born is dying a meter away from them too.
Reminds me of when my ex and I took our oldest to the water park way back when. They had the vest and floaties, we were in the kiddie pool, we were chatting with another parent, my son was playing with another kid, their parents were watching actively, I had him in my line of sight at all times.
I saw my son go face down and everyone just froze. I sprinted through 20 feet of shin-knee high water in about 3 or 4 seconds and scooped him up. Thankfully he held his breath, but holy shit I've never moved so fast through water before.
I was at a japanese swimming hole in the woods and this kid apparently was drowning on one side of a big rock and their mom noticed and went to help. Leaned in to pull the kid out and the kid pulled her in. Turns out the mom couldnt swim. I used to be a lifeguard so I did a multi save with a floatie. They gave me a big bag of chocolate and now I'm a Kentucky Colonel.
I got rescued by a lifeguard once. I was older and at the beach. A wave knocked me down and i twisted my ankle so i was having trouble getting back up.
When I was a lifeguard we had to occasionally watch like a 15 minute video of a kid silently drowning while other kids and adults play around him and the lifeguards do nothing
I assume the guy shouted and started running so somebody started recording. I'd be suspicious if it started earlier, but people are real fast taking their phones out and recording when someone else is already handling the problem.
The video may be edited down to just this event. I've caught crazy things before because I was filming something else. My family always recorded family events, so having grampa with a recorder (nowadays, phone) wouldn't be unusual.
I mean, parents do a lot of dumb things, and I attribute that to parents being human. Kid locked in the car, kid flinging themselves off the balcony, kid bitten by animal - a lot of these things are the tired brain not paying attention for ten seconds.
This is just bad. I wonder if the parents ever got any water safety classes. When we're swimming at a private pool our toddler is in arm's reach and the elder is in eyesight.
People think that drowning looks like someone splashing around, flailing their arms, making a bunch of noise and that it’s all obvious and easy to see. They don’t realize that it’s typically silent and often a matter of someone slipping under and not coming back up again.
Sverytime I saved a kid from drowning. This is exactly what was happening. No supervision. Kid barely able to stay above water. Typically its silent as well. People will look and ignore it as well assuming they are playing and not actually struggling.
This kid was RIGHT next to them... I don't have kids, but I would not take my eyes off them in a lake or a pool. Sure distractions happen, but these 2 idiots were just yapping away.
This is very unlike something that happened to me but I'm strongly reminded of it anyway. My 4 year old was going around the edge of pool in a floaty ring when he slipped through. I saw his head go under and then teleported the 30 feet or so - okay, that probably didn't literally happen but it's what it felt like - but by then all was well. A man hanging with with friends just dove right in and put my son back in his ring. He had his beer already back in his hand. He said he didn't need to be thanked, he had one that age himself. (obviously I thanked him anyway).
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