Monday, August 14, 2006

A Deadly Miscalculation About Water

I learned to swim when I was about three-years-old, and spent much of my childhood in and around swimming pools and beaches. I can't fathom why people would trifle with the water. But people do. In southwest suburban Chicago, a family was having a picnic near a dammed river, and a four-year-old boy jumped in the water. His brothers and other family members jumped in after him, but a powerful suction near the dam pulled some of them under. Two drowned and one is missing. The missing and probably dead family member is a Marine sergeant just returned from Iraq.

Incidents like this seem to happen often: one person gets in trouble in the water, and another drowns trying to perform a rescue. Water is dangerous, very dangerous, and what these people were doing having a picnic near a dam is beyond me.

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