Teenage boy, 16, dies after swimming in West Yorkshire canal during heatwave.

[Alan de Enfield]

Teenage boy, 16, dies after swimming in West Yorkshire canal during heatwave | UK News | Sky News

 

 

A 16-year-old boy has died after getting into difficulties while swimming in a canal in West Yorkshire.

The body of Alfie McCraw, from Wakefield, was found during a search of the Aire and Calder Navigation after he was reported missing on Monday afternoon.

 

Superintendent Nick Smart said: "This was an extremely tragic incident which has resulted in the loss of the life of a boy who had just finished his GCSEs.

"We have specially trained officers who are supporting Alfie's family at this unimaginably awful time.

"We are working with the Canal & River Trust to deliver some inputs into schools before they break up for the holidays to warn of the dangers of open water swimming, but we need everyone to help us in spreading this message

He urged people to "not be tempted to cool off in open water, unless it is a supervised area intended for swimming".

 

The emergency services have issued reminders in recent days of the dangers of open water, which can be very cold and induce hyperventilation.

[pete.i]

I am an education volunteer for the Canal and River Trust. I have recently moved to Wales to a part where we have no canals. This is the fourth drowning of a young adult this year. I try to specialise in water safety although we do other things as well. I sit on the Welsh Water Safety Main Group which consists of representatives of the emergency services and other interested groups including the Canal and River Trust. A large concern of these groups is the apparent lack of interest of schools in taking up the offers of FREE water safety presentations. CRT, and I would think the other services put out. CRT send flyers to as many schools as they can informing them of our educational offers and publicising CRT educational web sites. I know that the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Fire and Rescue services do as well. I have done two presentations in my area since we moved here last year. I am doing one presentation tomorrow for a school in Swansea who have asked for a water safety presentation before the children go on summer holidays. I do realise that schools do have a curriculum that they have to follow but I believe that water safety is so important that it should be taught in schools. Not neccessarily by CRT or the emergency services but we do provide that facility and that doesn't seem to be very well taken up by schools or uniform groups such as Beavers, Cubs etc.   

[Jerra]

20 minutes ago, pete.i said:

I am an education volunteer for the Canal and River Trust. I have recently moved to Wales to a part where we have no canals. This is the fourth drowning of a young adult this year. I try to specialise in water safety although we do other things as well. I sit on the Welsh Water Safety Main Group which consists of representatives of the emergency services and other interested groups including the Canal and River Trust. A large concern of these groups is the apparent lack of interest of schools in taking up the offers of FREE water safety presentations. CRT, and I would think the other services put out. CRT send flyers to as many schools as they can informing them of our educational offers and publicising CRT educational web sites. I know that the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Fire and Rescue services do as well. I have done two presentations in my area since we moved here last year. I am doing one presentation tomorrow for a school in Swansea who have asked for a water safety presentation before the children go on summer holidays. I do realise that schools do have a curriculum that they have to follow but I believe that water safety is so important that it should be taught in schools. Not neccessarily by CRT or the emergency services but we do provide that facility and that doesn't seem to be very well taken up by schools or uniform groups such as Beavers, Cubs etc.   

I know it is a while since I was in teaching but even then the problem was schools were expected to cover so much that some things which we would have done in previous decades just had to go by the board.  I suspect the situation is much worse now.

 

There are many people /organisations that think X and Y is so important it should be taught in schools. Take note of things in the news and every time there is a problem the cry is "education" schools should be teaching about that.  You can't fit a litre into a half litre pot.

[Athy]

At this time of the year, I wouldn't worry too much about disrupting schools' curriculums. Now that exams are over, and probably sorts day and prize day too,  teachers will probably welcome something which usefully fills part of an end-of-term day.

[Jerra]

54 minutes ago, Athy said:

At this time of the year, I wouldn't worry too much about disrupting schools' curriculums. Now that exams are over, and probably sorts day and prize day too,  teachers will probably welcome something which usefully fills part of an end-of-term day.

In our area the ones you need to talk to i.e. year 5 will have "left" by now.

 

EDIT.  Sorry living in the past year 11 I meant.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Jerra

[Jen-in-Wellies]

Bring back something like the Lonely Water public information film from the '70's to scare them.

I suppose now it would have to be a viral TickTock, whatever that is, to reach the target demographic.

Edited July 13, 2022 by Jen-in-Wellies

[Tony Brooks]

8 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

Bring back something like the Lonely Water public information film from the '70's to scare them.

I suppose now it would have to be a viral TickTock, whatever that is, to reach the target demographic.

 

Grab them young - a job for BBC children's TV I think, woven into existing programmes and as stand-alone shorts. I think read safety could be usefully added to that.

[john.k]

I had an incident like whats described happen to me as a teen.........a friend had a creek dammed off on their farm,and we used to swim there all the time...........I got the bright idea of diving in off the top of the pumphouse..............the water on the top was warm , but ten feet down it was ice cold ,so cold I seized up and couldnt swim...I did make it to the surface OK.

[Machpoint005]

It occurs to me that by the time someone is saying "don't do X" to a lad of 16, it is far too late. He'll raise two fingers to Authority and do it anyway.

 

Education starts, or should start, at a very young age, whether it's at home, nursery or school. 

 

Make education cuts and people suffer.

 

[gatekrash]

1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

It occurs to me that by the time someone is saying "don't do X" to a lad of 16, it is far too late. He'll raise two fingers to Authority and do it anyway.

 

Education starts, or should start, at a very young age, whether it's at home, nursery or school. 

 

Make education cuts and people suffer.

 

Exactly that. We (HM Coastguard) do water safety talks/presentations etc to schools all the time - we get a very good take up, but then we are in a very heavily populated coastal location. We've found the most engaged kids are always the primary age ones.

 

We also do secondary school visits, usually when they're having their 'community engagement' type of days or weeks. This is a much, much harder sell. The kids generally will tell you that they already 'know all about all that stuff'.

 

We generally target a specific area of concern, down here is normally tombstoning. We get called to broken teenagers on a regular basis after they've misjudged the tide or hit rocks on the way down, and can show the schools pictures etc of what happens, including interviews with teenagers left wheelchair bound after it went wrong. The usual response from the average normally male teenagers is'well they just didn't know what they were doing, we do'.

 

At that age, in your mind, you're generally invincible and haven't yet developed the experience to assess risk properly, so it's no surprise that this sort of thing happens.

[pete.i]

At the moment we only do KS1 and 2 along with the younger uniformed groups. As for schools not having the time the time should be made for such an important subject in my opinion. It doesn't have to be done by CRT, Coast Guard, RNLI or Fire and Rescue service although they all do it very well. Bottom line is that it will save lives and even if that is only one then it is well worth it. It is free or at least the CRT presentations are, I don't know about the others. As I said I sit on the Welsh Water Safety group and the lack of take up in schools is a recurring theme. That group consists of RNLI, Coast Guard, Fire Service and other interested parties. We haven't started doing any presentations in secondary schools although I am told that CRT will be starting them at some time and having dealt with both age groups for a good part of my life I have to admit that primary are a far easier group to get the message over to and that really is the age where water safety knowledge should be started in my opinion. The biggest problem I have found is that it can be a scary subject. I suppose there is an element of fright needed to make the message sink in but you do have to be very very careful with young children especially in this day and age. 

[MrsM]

I still remember the horrific safety video about not playing on train lines and especially not going into tunnels. Found it very traumatic and it totally scared me off even thinking about doing it (a bit like the '70s sex ed videos)!

[Jerra]

3 hours ago, pete.i said:

At the moment we only do KS1 and 2 along with the younger uniformed groups. As for schools not having the time the time should be made for such an important subject in my opinion.

Simple question.

 

What would you drop from the curriculum to fit it in.  A question never answered by people have the mantra "schools should teach ......"

[nicknorman]

9 hours ago, pete.i said:

I am an education volunteer for the Canal and River Trust. I have recently moved to Wales to a part where we have no canals. This is the fourth drowning of a young adult this year. I try to specialise in water safety although we do other things as well. I sit on the Welsh Water Safety Main Group which consists of representatives of the emergency services and other interested groups including the Canal and River Trust. A large concern of these groups is the apparent lack of interest of schools in taking up the offers of FREE water safety presentations. CRT, and I would think the other services put out. CRT send flyers to as many schools as they can informing them of our educational offers and publicising CRT educational web sites. I know that the Royal National Lifeboat Institute and the Fire and Rescue services do as well. I have done two presentations in my area since we moved here last year. I am doing one presentation tomorrow for a school in Swansea who have asked for a water safety presentation before the children go on summer holidays. I do realise that schools do have a curriculum that they have to follow but I believe that water safety is so important that it should be taught in schools. Not neccessarily by CRT or the emergency services but we do provide that facility and that doesn't seem to be very well taken up by schools or uniform groups such as Beavers, Cubs etc.   

 

I suggest that it is important to know whether your (and other people’s) such inputs actually make any difference? “When I were a lad” etc, we didn’t have that sort of stuff at school. It was all academic stuff. Teachers were not expected to teach the kids the basics of staying alive. We did get taught to swim but these accidents seem to happen to people who can swim. But become incapacitated. Is there any data to show that youth unintentional drownings (as a % of the population) has increased over the past say 50 years? Or that such education actually makes a difference?

 

Today we were on the Wey and at a bridge there was a very large red sign saying “DO NOT JUMP OFF THIS BRIDGE”, but needless to say the locals were doing just that.

 

In part I think young people are taught to have an expectation that the world around them is intrinsically safe, when of course it is anything but.

[Machpoint005]

Parents often think their children are someone else's responsibility, especially when something goes tits up

 

 

. 

[Quattrodave]

The local kids were jumping off the lock while I was trying to use it last weekend. I dare say if one had got injured it would have been my fault... 

 

A family also got really grumpy at me when I wanted to use the next lock, apparently I was disrupting they're picnic....

Edited July 13, 2022 by Quattrodave

[ditchcrawler]

Most dont think their kids could do anything wrong or silly

[Quattrodave]

6 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Most dont think their kids could do anything wrong or silly

Ha, most that I've come across are complete idiots.

[ditchcrawler]

1 minute ago, Quattrodave said:

Ha, most that I've come across are complete idiots.

Parents or kids?

[Machpoint005]

4 minutes ago, Quattrodave said:

Ha, most that I've come across are complete idiots.

 

3 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Parents or kids?

 

That's because you never come across those that aren't. They are somewhere else, being sensible and responsible. 

 

[Jerra]

21 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Parents or kids?

Both.

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Parents or kids?

 

My son in law who is a secondary school teacher would say parents.

[Machpoint005]

1 hour ago, The Happy Nomad said:

 

My son in law who is a secondary school teacher would say parents.

 

He'd be right. 

 

If only teachers could say to parents "I can do nothing with this one, you've broken him".

[john.k]

You can teach all the swimming you like,Ive never heard mention of  freezing cold water underneath hot surface water in the middle of scorching hot summer...... a lot of people would say its nonsense.

[noddyboater]

What are the actual statistics of children drowning in open water in an average year?

If half the kids in the country gave up sitting in their dark bedrooms and went out and actually enjoyed themselves in the open air for once is it really that shocking that some don't come back home?

I learnt to swim as a young child in the tidal Dorset Stour, under supervision by my mother who couldn't swim herself!  When we moved up North it was bike rides out to the nearest ponds,  reservoirs and weir pools for a dip as kids,  that's what the summer holidays were all about.  

Should we discourage this because several kids are lost every summer? I'm sure more are lost through cycling injuries but that's actively encouraged.