Boating accidents mar holiday weekend
The Fourth of July holiday weekend drew what state officials say was almost certainly the largest number of recreational boaters Texas public waters will see this year as hundreds of thousands of Texans took advantage of full lakes, summer weather, good fishing and, for most, an extra day off
Time on the water turned out wonderfully for the vast majority of boaters and their passengers. But not for some. As is soberingly predictable, the holiday weekend and the days ahead of it saw a spike in boating-related accidents and boaters cited for violations of the state’s boating laws.
“It was a very busy week for our wardens; July Fourth is probably the biggest boating weekend of the year,” said assistant commander Cody Jones of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s law enforcement division. “Unfortunately, there were several serious accidents.”
One fatality too many
Over the three-day weekend, TPWD game wardens investigated 34 boating accidents across the state, Jones said.
One of those accidents resulted in the weekend’s only boating-related fatality when a 9-year-old girl fell from a boat on Cedar Creek Lake and was struck by the boat’s propeller.
“It was a just a horrific tragedy,” said Jones, who heads marine law enforcement for the agency charged by the Texas Legislature with primary responsibility for enforcing the state’s Water Safety Act and investigating boating-related accidents.
Four of those accidents resulted in major injury to boaters.
A head-on collision involving two boats on Chocolate Bayou in West Galveston Bay resulted in two people suffering severe injuries including multiple fractures, Jones said. One of the victims, critically injured, was taken by helicopter to Houston for medical care.
Other accidents resulting in severe injuries included a pair of incidents on Lake Travis and an accident on Lake Caddo in which a boat with several people aboard ran into a large cypress tree. The Caddo collision resulted in several injuries, the most severe being a head injury to a child on the vessel, Jones said.
One of the most disturbing accidents occurred July 3 on Lake LBJ when a ski-style boat that witnesses said held several people struck a 51-year-old woman who was swimming from a boat to a nearby dock. The boat that struck the woman, causing severe injury from the boat’s propeller, did not stop.
“It was a hit-and-run. They just kept going,” Jones said.
TPWD game wardens are conducting an investigation of that accident, looking for the persons involved in the hit-andrun. Operation Game Thief, the privately funded “crime stoppers” program that solicits anonymous tips concerning crimes in- vestigated by TPWD game wardens, has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case, Jones said.
Crowds play a factor
The number of boating accidents over the July Fourth weekend was above average for the holiday weekend, with the unusually large number of boaters on the water almost certainly contributing to the increase. Crowds were up, especially on Lake Travis and others reservoirs on the Highland Lakes chain that had seen much-reduced boating traffic over the past few summers as the lakes’ water levels fell to near record lows. Heavy rains over the past several month filled those reservoirs ahead of this summer, triggering increased boating activity.
But increased boat traffic isn’t the only risk. The heavy, silt-laden runoff from spring and early summer rains have created boating hazards by altering channels, forming hidden sandbars and depositing large trees and other flood debris.
“It all makes being extremely careful and practicing safe boating that much more important,” Jones said.
The single fatality over the holiday weekend, while tragic, was below the number typically seen over the biggest boating weekend of the year. Texas has seen 13 boating-related fatalities this calendar year, Jones said. That is on a pace with recent years but down significantly from the not-so-distant past.
This past year, boating accidents resulted in 34 fatalities, and the average over the past five years has been about 30 fatalities. Over the 10-year period from 1997 to 2007, Texas annually averaged almost 50 boating-related fatalities.
“We saw a steady decline in fatalities over a long period, but that seems to have leveled out in the past few years,” Jones said. “Overall boating accident numbers haven’t changed that much.”
Texas boating-accident statistics show a mix of encouraging and concerning trends, Jones said.
On the positive side, the number of boating accidents and fatalities involving personal watercraft — the boating version of motorcycles and often called by their trademarked names such as Jet Ski and WaveRunner — has dropped considerably over the past decade or so. A decade ago, personal watercraft, which make up less than 15 percent of the almost 600,000 registered recreational vessels in Texas, accounted for 35 to 45 percent of boating accidents and many fatalities.
“Last year, Texas had zero fatalities involving PWCs and only two reported serious injuries,” Jones said. “That’s a significant change.”
Texas law requiring anyone born on or after Sept. 1, 1993, to have taken and passed a boater education course before operating a PWC or any boat with 15-horsepower or larger rating almost certainly has played a role in that change, Jones said. But while accidents involving personal watercraft have plunged, accidents and fatalities involving kayaks, canoes and other non-motorized paddle craft have spiked.
This past year, more than 40 percent of Texas’ boating-related fatalities involved paddle craft, Jones said. This year, almost half of the 13 fatalities have involved canoes or kayaks.
Paddle craft have exploded in popularity over the last decade —Texans own an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 kayaks, canoes and other non-motorized boats that are not required to be registered. Many of the users are inexperienced and ignore basic boating safety practices, especially concerning wearing a personal flotation device — a life jacket.
“Wearing a PFD is one of the most important safety precautions a boater can do, and it’s extremely important in paddle craft,” Jones said.
Alcohol, water don’t mix
The other major boating safety precaution is avoiding alcohol when operating a boat. Alcohol impairment is one of the major factors in boating accidents, and Texas law prohibiting operating a boat on public water while under the influence of alcohol mirrors those for operating a motor vehicle on public roads.
From June 24 through July 4, most of Texas’ 513 game wardens were on the state’s public waters, conducting water-safety enforcement patrols. They contacted approximately 72,300 boaters — 53,300 of them over the three-day Fourth of July weekend. They arrested 63 boat operators on charges of boating while intoxicated, with 50 of those arrests coming over the holiday weekend. Wardens also made 55 arrests for other criminal offenses.
Then there were the plane crashes.
“We actually had two plane crashes in Texas lakes this weekend — a biplane in Lake Travis and an ultralight in Lake Palestine,” Jones said, adding the planes’ occupants, unlike some Texas boaters over the holiday weekend, survived the incidents without serious injury.