Grim statistics aren’t improving
Minutes after this paragraph was first written, it was miserably out of date. A dutiful exhortation for water safety seemed timely, prompted by three Christmas/Boxing Day drownings. That figure was outdated after four paragraphs, when a newsflash crawled across the top of the screen announcing a December 27 death, from a boat capsize in the Far North.
So there you go. Another ripple through the news cycle, and another sea of anguish for bereft loved ones and closest friends.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Stand sufficiently far back from aching personal grief and it’s almost tediously familiar stuff.
Ultimately, perhaps less memorable than the Christmas Eve survival of kina diver Todd Russell. His skipper was perhaps our most famous survivor – Rob Hewitt, who survived 75 hours at sea in 2006.
We all like good endings. Whereas 2019, as a drowning year, isn’t going to have one. Neither is it all that remarkably bad. Or rather, it’s bad without being remarkable.
The year is shaping up to be ordinarily close to the five-year average of 79 deaths.
If we tacitly treat this as an intractable problem, then the view becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Coroners have four new cases to frown over, searching for timely warnings or perhaps new ways to communicate old ones.
Will there be any useful way for coroners, or anyone, to bring home the warnings around rock fishing – standout setting for drownings that it is? Something other than the often-echoed reminders for rock fishers to never turn their back on the sea – to treat this as a companionable not solitary activity, wear lifejackets, take an intelligent interest in weather and tide information, and for pity’s sake just understand that the sea is hungry around the edges?
That’s another thing. One particular focus this year needs to be to put an end to the wan, halfsmiling indulgence of young people at the beach taking to the water on inflatable toys designed only for pool use, and capable of whisking them out to sea in even light winds.
You want larger issues? Most of our children learn to swim in pools, which is good as far as it goes but doesn’t go as far as it used to. School pool closures during the past five years, swimming-related costs and the national curriculum are all affecting kids’ ability to swim.
For these reasons, and also because so much actual swimming doesn’t happen in pools, studies involving Otago University and Water Safety NZ to explore how swimming could be taught in outdoor environments take on particular interest. Moreover, water safety groups have been collectively warning of the widening shortfall in their capability to meet growing expectation and demand, reliant as they are on volunteerism and vulnerable funding streams.
Whether the solution proves to be greater recourse to professionalism is far from a given, but there’s little doubt that greater support for volunteers is key. How this is best targeted and delivered needs to be front and centre in our thinking.