Watchful eyes flood waterways for holiday
Game wardens will be on alert for infractions on Memorial Day
National Safe Boating Week runs through Friday, and there’s a reason the nationwide effort to get boating safety messages in front of the public is timed just ahead of the Memorial Day weekend.
The three days anchored by the Monday holiday have proved to be some of the most dangerous and deadly for Texas’ recreational boaters, hundreds of thousands of whom take advantage of the holiday weekend to hit the lakes, rivers and bays in what usually is the year’s first major rush of on-the-water outdoor recreation. Combine the crush of boaters, many inexperienced in boat operation, with the giddiness and distraction of interacting with friends and family, then add alcohol into the mix, and you have the makings of major misadventures.
Last Memorial Day weekend was a particularly bad one for boating safety on Texas waters. Over the three-day period, four people died, and two others were seriously injured in the 21 boating accidents to which Texas Parks and Wildlife Department game wardens responded.
Statistics improving
State game wardens, the law enforcement officers with primary responsibility for enforcing the state’s water safety laws as well as fishing and hunting regulations, issued almost 1,600 citations over the 2014 Memorial Day weekend. More than a third of those were for violations of water safety laws. They also arrested 31 people on boating-while-intoxicated charges.
“We’ll certainly be out on the water, in force, over this holiday weekend,” Lt. Kevin Glass of TPWD law enforcement division’s North Houston office said of the agency’s 500 or so game wardens. “Our primary job will be public safety and education.”
While it’s a depressing certainty those game wardens and the other Texas peace officers enforcing the state’s water safety laws will encounter scores of boaters violating those laws and almost surely be called to respond to boating accidents over the coming holiday weekend, there are encouraging signs more boaters are taking safety messages to heart. Despite significant increases in the number of boats on the water, recreational boating has become safer over the past decades.
In 1973, 1,754 people lost their lives in recreational boating accidents, according to U.S. Coast Guard data. Coast Guard figures show 610 people died in recreational boating accidents during 2014. That’s the second-lowest number of fatalities on record. The lowest number of nationwide boating fatalities came in 2013, when 560 people died in recreational boating accidents. Those numbers represent a decline of more than 60 percent in boating-related fatalities over the four decades.
Figures from Texas track that nationwide trend. The state averaged 54 recreational boating fatalities annually over the five-year period 1997-2001. Over the past five years, that average has dropped to 29 fatalities, with 2013 seeing a record-low 22.
While that’s encouraging, Texas’ 6.9 fatalities per 100,000 registered boats in 2014 was higher than the national average of 5.2 fatalities per 100,000 registered boats. Emphasis on life jackets
Two actions by boaters — having/wearing life jackets and having boat operators not drink alcohol — would easily reduce the number of boating accidents and fatalities and also see boaters avoid the most common citation issued for violation of water safety laws.
“Without doubt, the most common water safety violations wardens see involve life jackets,” said Major William Skeen, who supervises TPWD law enforcement officers in eastern Texas. Texas law requires an approved life jacket (personal flotation device, or PFD) for each person aboard a boat. Only persons younger than 13 and all persons aboard personal watercraft are required to wear a PFD when the craft is underway. But the life jackets must be “readily accessible” to boaters who are not required to wear them at all times.
Texas wardens vigorously enforce the PFD rules, especially the law requiring that children wear PFDs when in a boat less than 26 feet long.
“We have zero tolerance with violations of the PFD rules for children,” Skeen said.
Wearing life jackets, even when not required, could also save lives.
“I’ve been a game warden for 23 years and have pulled dozens of drowning victims out of the water,” said Glass, who in 2013 was named TPWD’s Marine Officer of The Year for his work in water safety. “Only one of them was wearing a life jacket — a man who had a heart attack.”
But those PFDs save lives only when worn.
“Things can happen in a heartbeat on the water. The boat can hit a stump or a wave, and the next thing you know, you’re in the water,” Glass said. “You can’t call ‘time out,’ dig around to find a life jacket, and put it on.”
Coast Guard data backs up the effectiveness of life jackets in reducing boating fatalities. In 2014, 78 percent of victims of fatal boating accidents drowned; 84 percent of them were not wearing life jackets. Designate an operator
Operator inattention, improper lookout, operator inexperience, excess speed, and alcohol use were ranked as the top five primary contributing factors to boating accidents, according to Coast Guard data. But the leading contributing factor in fatal boating accidents was alcohol use.
Concentrated enforcement of Texas’ boating-while-intoxicated statutes by game wardens and other marine law enforcement officers has raised boater awareness of the seriousness of the danger created by intoxicated boat operators.
“Ten years ago, you never saw a ‘designated boat operator’ like you see designated drivers,’ ” Glass said. “That’s not the case now. That’s a good sign.”