Teaching survival on the lake
Cold-water bootcamp coming to the city later this month
Beth Brown
Northern News Services
Friday, September 2, 2016
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
A group of experts is coming to teach the science of cold-water immersion and dispel commonly held first-aid myths.
The Canadian Safe Boating Council, in conjunction with the territorial government, is hosting cold-water safety workshops later this month. Here, Dave De Lought prepares to catch a throw bag from Adam Woogh, Yellowknife regional manager for Arctic Response, during a separate public safety demonstration on cold-water safety in 2013. - NNSL file photo |
The Canadian Safe Boating Council, in partnership with the GNWT, is offering a Cold Water Workshop and Instructor Course at the Air Tindi Float Base, Sept. 22 to 24.
Ian Gilson, director for the Canadian Safe Boating Council, said the purpose of the program is to help people understand the dangers of cold-water immersion, or "the cold facts."
This is the first time this specific course has been taught in the territories.
The workshop will last one day and is open to everyone. Participants will learn about mechanisms of heat loss, thermal protection, proper triage of the hypothermic victim, methods of removing people from the water and re-warming techniques.
The instructor course is a two-day class open to first responders who are already connected with marine rescue, such as RCMP, Red Cross, fire rescue, military and coast guard personnel. The course will put participants in a place to train other first responders how to deal with victims of hypothermia.
The courses will be led by Gordon Giesbrecht, an expert in hypothermia and thermophysiology from the University of Manitoba. He is colloquially named 'Professor Popsicle', as dubbed by Outside Magazine.
"In the world of cold, the general public and even professionals are steeped in incorrect information," said Giesbrecht.
These misconceptions range from the potentially fatal error of placing a person with cold trauma in a tub of warm water, or just believing people lose most of their heat from their head when in actuality, they don't.
Normal core temperature, meaning the temperature of the heart, lungs and brain, is 37 C. Core temperatures that fall as low as 35 C are classified as cold-stressed. Mild hypothermia goes from 35 C to 32 C. Moderate hypothermia sets in at 28 C, and if core temperature falls below 28 C, it is considered to be severe hypothermia.
He says most people haven't experienced a true state of hypothermia, but anyone who has ever made a snowman or gone for a swim in the spring, for example, has been cold-stressed.
As hypothermia sets in, it develops in three stages. The first stage, called cold shock response, lasts about a minute in the water and includes gasping and hyperventilation. The second stage is cold incapacitation, which gets gradually worse over 15 to 20 minutes of cold water submersion, as muscle and nerve fibres cool.
"You get weaker and less co-ordinated and can't swim, you can't hold onto a boat," said Giesbrecht.
The third stage, hypothermia, takes about a half-hour to set in.
"It's a continuum. By then you will be very weak, unco-ordinated and shivering a lot. Your mental capacity will start to diminish and eventually your shivering will diminish and you will lose consciousness," Giesbrecht continued, adding most people drown long before they reach hypothermia, unless they are wearing a life-jacket. "The only way you can live long enough in cold water to die of hypothermia is if you have flotation."
When it comes to a cold-water rescue, knowing how to properly remove a hypothermic victim from the water is not only important to keeping that person alive, but it also helps the rescuer avoid making the situation worse by becoming a victim themselves.
Gilson explained why.
"The body is sensitive to jostling when you are very cold," he said. "It's important to keep the victim as horizontal as possible. If you keep them vertical blood pools in their lower legs and the heart has to start pumping madly to distribute the blood."
The course will include simulated on-the-water scenarios for cold-water rescue. Gilson said participants of the instructor course are welcome to bring their personal vessels, "to learn how to extract someone who is potentially hypothermic into their own boat."
Space is limited for both the instructor course and the cold-water safety workshop. For more information or to register, visit the event page of the Canadian Safe Boating Council website.
