Education Vital In Boating Safety
Michael Rash died of the cold on an 80-degree day in June.
He was two weeks shy of his 14th birthday, a dishwater blond in a T-shirt and cutoff shorts fishing with his grandfather and father. A fishing pole bounced off the back of the 16-foot boat on Lake Roosevelt.
Michael hopped in after it.
“He came up one time,” mother Jo Rash said. “His dad asked him if he saw anything. He said, ‘No,’ and went back down. He never came up again.”
It’s been 17 years since that June day, when the water was 40 degrees and her son died of hypothermia, but Rash still remembers it vividly. No one has to tell the Metaline resident that more education is needed to prevent Washington boating accidents.
And no one has to tell boating-safety advocates that the rate of recreational boating deaths in Washington is twice the national average. They already know.
“It’s kind of an ugly statistic, isn’t it?” said Marcia Via of Ritzville, a member of the Inland Northwest Drowning Prevention Coalition.
The statistics get uglier.
In 21 of the 37 boating-related deaths in Washington last year, the victims weren’t wearing life jackets or other flotation devices, according to a draft report from the Washington Parks and Recreation Commission. In at least four of the deaths, alcohol or drugs was a factor.
Those figures don’t surprise boat-safety advocates in Eastern Washington. They called for more education, for tougher boating laws and for well-spent prevention money. They suggested that a law require boaters to obtain driver’s licenses. They wanted everyone on boats to wear flotation devices. And they asked that people stop mixing alcohol with the waters.
“The state is not doing a good job,” said Sgt. Fred Howard of the Grant County sheriff’s office. His county is second only to King County in acres of surface water. The office is understaffed and underequipped, Howard said.
Howard, also president of the Washington Boating Safety Officers Association, said enforcement can go only so far. People have to be educated about proper boat safety, he said.
Howard’s water stories run leagues deep.
He remembers accidents such as the one July 23, when high winds and 6-foot swells tossed a boat like a yo-yo on the Columbia River near Wanapum Dam.
A 3-year-old girl, her 6-year-old brother and their 37-year-old great-aunt all drowned. The children’s parents were taking the boat out for a test ride. They bought life jackets in Yakima but forgot them. They stopped on the road to buy more jackets but left them on the beach. They never reached under the bow for the jackets stored there.
“Had they a clue, they’d probably be alive today,” Howard said.
State boating deaths declined in the early 1990s but increased dramatically over the past two years, the recreation commission’s draft report shows. The rate of boating fatalities nationwide has declined over the past 10 years.
In Idaho, where many Spokane residents take their boats, 14 people died last year - four times the national per capita average. The state just kicked off a boating safety campaign: “Life Jackets. They float. You don’t.”
In Spokane County, nobody has died in the past two years in boating-related accidents. That doesn’t mean the county’s programs can be lax, said Tom Henderson, deputy sheriff for the Spokane County Marine Enforcement Unit. About 20,000 of the state’s 225,000 registered boats are in Spokane County.
All sheriff’s boats are now equipped with portable breath testers to test for alcohol. The county will also continue its program that loans life jackets to boaters instead of citing them. The county has about 20 life jackets to loan, but loans maybe one or two a week.
“Having life jackets is pretty common knowledge,” Henderson said. “That’s just the problem. We can make them have the life jackets. We can’t make them wear them.”
That’s where education comes in, Via said. The coalition coordinates the life-jacket program in nine eastern Washington counties. The coalition’s programs also help put up signs encouraging people to be safe on the water. Still, some people are stubborn.
“I don’t care what trauma we’re talking about,” said Via, also trauma prevention coordinator for the East Regional EMS Council. “For someone’s behavior to change, it usually doesn’t happen until they lose a loved one. And that is way too late.”
, DataTimes