The Dominion Post
June 30, 2002
By Wallace Venable
Last Saturday, in a guest commentary titled "Monongahela riverwatch," Charles J. Kosten painted a gloomy picture of boating on the Monongahela. While I applaud his interest in improving safety, I must take issue with many of his findings.
Kosten portrays the river as snagging the bottoms of boats and torturing victims with hypothermia in the summertime. In reality, in summer the Mon is generally too slow to snag anything and so warm that it takes hours to induce hypothermia. In the summer, the water in the Mon is good enough for swimming, although the facilities are not. The really dangerous times to be in the Mon are on the wonderful sunny days in March and April when the water is still frigid, and, of course, when the river is in flood.
Kosten suggests placing swimming floats and rowboats along the river for emergency use by bystanders. The annals of "life saving" are full of cases where would-be rescuers only increased loss of life through foolhardy actions. We should not encourage persons safe on shore to "add another to the death toll" in case of a potential drowning.
Yes, I do think it would be good to put life rings along portions of the trail -- trail users slipping off the bank deserve any assistance they can be given. I grant that it might also be worthwhile installing automated 911 equipment along the riverfront; trail users with heart attacks and contusions from bicycle collisions would be the most likely beneficiaries, however.
No "life saving station" should include equipment which encourages bystanders to enter the water. We should only provide floatation devices to be thrown and ropes and poles which can be used to render assistance from shore.
To see how to keep boaters from drowning we should look at the Coast Guard boating fatality statistics.
* Most boating drowning victims (86 percent) were not wearing a PFD (life preserver).
* Most boating fatalities (84 percent) were on boats where the operator had not taken a safe boating course.
(Exceptions often involve severe waves or weather, equipment failure and collisions.)
These findings are the basis of both state and national safety programs. The effective route to drowning prevention lies in wearing PFDs and learning safe boating procedures.
West Virginia requires pleasure boats to have an "immediately accessible," wearable PFD for each person on board. The law says they must be worn on PWC ("jetskis"), and implies that they must be worn in kayaks. Anyone "on" a boat should wear a PFD, although people "in" one over about 16 feet long may not need to.
While West Virginia doesn't make every boat operator take a boating exam (some states do), it now requires all persons born after 1986 to complete a boating safety course and be 16 years old before operating any motorboat, including a PWC.
During the past 20 years, the annual number of boating fatalities has steadily declined, while boat numbers have increased and Coast Guard on-water services to boaters have been reduced. The tool used to achieve this task has been education. Boating safety comes from being properly trained and using knowledge to maintain a properly equipped boat and operate it sensibly. State-approved safe boating courses are regularly scheduled in our area by the Mountaineer Power Squadron and are also offered by the Coast Guard Auxiliary and DNR.
As for rowboats, "torpedoes" and "paddleboards," my intuition is that they would most likely be used for play by drunks and fools. They are tools of beach life-saving professionals, and not generally recognized as "boating safety" equipment. Sooner or later, they would probably result in a suit claiming that they constituted an "attractive nuisance."
Wallace Venable has been a United States Power Squadrons safe boating instructor since 1970. During his fifteen years in the United States Coast Guard Auxiliary he served as an Instructor and Vessel Examiner in the Morgantown area.