99% terrible odds for repeat activity
Again, I was not using the 99% statement to defend the activity, but to explain it. I agree, a 1% chance of dying from a given act would be terrible odds for any recreational activity. That would be 10,000 deaths for every million. In fact, even 0.1% or 0.01% would be unacceptable for a sport like bungee jumping or para-sailing.
And yet, the success rate is high enough that dare-devils will try it and will usually get away with it. It’s the same people who sit on the edge of tall buildings or drive drunk or try heroin. Yes we should do what we can to educate people who don’t know the danger, but that’s not going to stop people who are willing to take the 1% risks. They don’t need a video to give them the idea, the dam itself gives them the idea.
So, how about a campaign to get rid of as many low-head dams as possible? What other designs would be safer?
What should you do?
By the way, since one purpose of this board is to spread useful, life-saving information, does anyone here know what you SHOULD do if you are accidentaly swept over a low-head dam and find yourself caught in the back wash, and it is too powerful to simply bull your way out?
Breathe correctly
In any kind of recirculation the natural tendency when you come up is to inhale. That simply fills your lungs with stale air and shortens the time till you drown. Instead you should exhale sharply and then let yourself inhale naturally. That may buy you some time.
check out “Lowhead” by Tom Lindblade
and Cline. It is on utube and the ACA website. Good wakeup call for those that don’t get it.
If the current had been stronger, it
would NOT have increased boof speed enough to clear the boil. The guy does not know how to boof anyway. His lack of knowledge has been clearly established through his comments on boatertalk. As for your 90% comment, I don’t think that applies to the low head shown, or to the low head dams common in the midwest. I do not know of any similar low head dam where a 90% success rate would be achieved under conditions where people are out paddling.
The rescue services in the midwest are all bent out of shape over people trying to run these things, leading to expensive and dangerous rescues or body recovery.
You need to defend it or drop it.
There is no meaningful basis for saying that there is a 99 or even a 90% survival rate running low head dams. The real reason people run them is either because they don’t know the danger, or because they weren’t paying attention and got washed over.
Take the harmless-looking low head dam on the Vermillion in Illinois. It often has almost no drop, and rafters unfamiliar with hydraulics will plow right into it. After they are trapped for a while and have to struggle to get out, I can guarantee you they are not chalking the run up in the “success” column. It’s about that time they recall the rafting outfitter told them to portage on the right.
Some old advice
for escaping hydraulics in whitewater is to try to get deep and “make shapes” i.e., do things with your arms and legs to try to find a current escaping the hydraulic. Balling up may be a good technique if you have to swim over drops, but in a hydraulic it just makes you recirculate better.
In my experience, people usually wash out of hydraulics before boats do because the bouyancy of the boat keeps it near the surface. I have been stuck in some holes, however, where my canoe washed out before I did. If a boat containing water washes out of the hydraulic, you may be able to pull yourself out by hanging on to it. Most of the time, however, hanging on to a boat while being recirculated is not a great idea.
I hesitate to mention it, but it has been suggested as a “last resort” to shed your PFD so as to be able to get deep to the escape current and to be able to swim as effectively as possible to try to cross the boil line when you surface. Thankfully, I have never had occasion to resort to this. I don’t know if this advice originated with someone who actually escaped using the technique, or came from some arm chair theorist.
Why are so many lowheads unmarked?
Is this just a matter of money or bureaucracy or what? Here in upper NYS at least one major dam across the Hudson river is unmarked, or so minimally as to virtually be unmarked.
Is there a history to why they have remained unmarked or a new trend?
From a beginners perspective
the initial drop with spill looks so different filmed from the top - it looks like a much longer drop, dangerous for anyone to attempt etc. I was thinking holy cow I can’t believe someone even did that.
The second? (or it could have been edited to look like the second attempt and was actually the first, which having gone well would have led to a second) looked like just a little ol’ drop. 2 feet? maybe 3?
I wondered if it was someplace up or downstream.
Is that perhaps one of the points the video demonstrates? How things look different from different perspectives?
For the uninitiated (myself) the second drop doesn’t look all that dangerous and I can see why people would underestimate it.
Certainly a confusing video that raises more questions than it answers and therefore dangerous in what it leads people to think.
They are the same drop
The camera perspective from the overhead elongates the drop. It is not the height of the drop that makes it difficult. Nobody is likely to get hurt going over a drop of a couple or few feet and landing in the water.
Look at the video again. Take note that all of the water within and beyond one boat length of the base of the dam is flowing back upstream. It is that recirculation that makes a low head dam so dangerous.
G2d mentioned the hole at Woodall Shoals on the Chattooga River. That hole also looks pretty innocuous and it can certainly be run. But it is a "keeper" hydraulic. The movie Deliverance came out in 1972 and credited the Chattooga River (actually the film had footage from the Chattooga, the Chauga, and the Tallulah Rivers). A lot of folks who saw the movie thought it would be good sport to float the Chattooga in inner tubes. At Woodall, a number were directed by the current into the hole. No doubt, a good many escaped, but within the next 15 years, or so, 8 people drowned in that hole.
When looking at a hole, look to see if water is flowing out of it. Look at the corners of the hole. If the hole is shaped so that the corners point in a downstream direction (imagine a "smile" shape from your upstream perspective) you will probably be able to work your way to the corner and get funnelled out downstream. If the corners are angled so that they are upstream of the body of the hole ( a "frowning" hole) getting to the corner of the hole will probably result in you getting fed back into the hole.
Low head dams are so dangerous because there is no "corner" to the hydraulic. The hydraulic goes from bank to bank.
you’re trying too hard
You’re trying so hard to disprove me that you’re making up words for me. I didn’t say 90-99%+ “success” rate, I said “survival” rate. “Survival” means they lived. So your rafters example puts another 4-10 lives in the survival column of my statistic.
At any rate, I don’t really feel a need to defend my statistic. It seems correct to me, based on my personal experience (which I happen to think is pretty extensive in the questionable field of dumb things young men do), so I present it to the group for whatever that may be worth. If others disagree, then fine. I stick to my number, but your mileage may vary.
My point is that it would be more useful if we could shift this discussion to focus on things that could be done to reduce the toll taken. I’m a little bothered by the fact that it seems easy to get comments about how dumb these people are, but very few comments about practical ways to reduce the danger.
Well, true, people are dumb in canoes, but they’re also dumb in cars and we’ve spent billions to help them survive their car dumbness. How about a little work to help them survive canoe dumbness as well? Nobody responded to my suggestions on how to make low-head dams safer, and I had to coax the few people to talk about how to survive an incident. Now tideplay posts another good point – why not more signage, a very simple and basic step – but again it seems few people have anything to say about that.
The situation gets really confusing
Quote of trucker from Boatertalk:
“In my original post down the page, I shared a video and quoted (even said “quote:”) the description from youtube, with the intent of showing the ignorance of unexperienced kayakers with regards to dams. When people mistakenly singled me out for being in the video (biggb and RayS), I decided to roll with it to demonstrate how common sense for boaters doesn’t translate to common sense in a kid with a rec kayak. If you check his youtube page, his response to comments hasn’t been that different.
That’s why we are the ones with the responsibility to inform and protect, rather than writing off some kid with a rec kayak as seeking a “darwin award”.
Lest there be anyone inspired by bucketmouthangler’s dam run, let me post another less successful scenario. Ain’t no joke.”
I say if he wants to go over, let him go
There are bold kayakers,
And there are old kayakers.
But there are no old, bold kayakers.
Yes! You have my vote
I agree this video suggests that you can successfully run these dangerous dams. We should find out how to have this removed.
Perceived risk vs Actual Risk
These dams appear to be easy challenges for a bold adventurous kayaker, not the death traps we know they are. Herein lies the problem. It is devilishly difficult to demonstrate how dangerous they actually are!
A horrible example of this was the Shuttle disaster, the one where a piece of foam no larger than 8" across hit the leading edge of the wing of the shuttle. EVEN PHYSICISTS WHO KNOW THE MATH were in total denial about the ACTUAL FORCE OF THAT 8" PIECE OF FOAM ACCELERATED TO 300 MILES PER HOUR.
The shuttle could have been saved but the scientists said, hell, that piece of foam hitting your car windshield would just do nothing.
But that is only 60 mph! They ran the test at the speed the foam hit the shuttle and it knocked a 3 foot hole in the leading edge, causing the break up of the shuttle on re-entry. Those scientists were in tears and totally distraught. They should have known better.
Somehow, SEEING IS BELIEVING. So maybe we should not be showing the 1% of people escaping these dams, and we should be showing the underwater views of the debris, the trwisted steel, tires, boulders, wire, and things trapped down there, etc.
Drowning video
If you’ve got a fast connection – or can walk away from your computer for a while-- download and watch this video. It scared me when I first saw it, and it’s still hard to watch. The dam doesn’t look big or scary.
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http://www.lifesaving.com/presentations/index.html
Binghamton Fire Department Drowning Incident Video Clip (359 MB - Zip File)
Available Now
This video is the actual and edited film clip taken by news reporters which shows two firefighters drown and 5 who almost drown while attempting to recover a PFD from the face of a low-head dam. This footage was taken the day after a child drowned when his raft overturned in the swollen river and a police officer drowned when his boat overturned during the search for that child.
more
There's a neat model used for demonstration in this short clip:
http://grandrapidswhitewater.com/tag/low-head-dam-modification/
More dam modifications:
http://www.paddleiowa.org/newsletter/low-head_dams.pdf
rock rapids conversion looks cool
the rock rapids conversion from the lowhead dam looks cool and actually transforms the death trap into a playful area.
i learned something here too. Some of these lowhead dams are totally unseen during spring flood. Totally horrible.
stair steps
If the dam is needed to control water flow for some reason then they need to be built. They can be built like stairs to break up that hydrolic at the end. Many things CAN be done, Few things will be done but people can be educated about dangerous behavior and posting signs will in the end help Darwinean principals prevail.
Liveoutside
But in flood
At least the really-really-low low dams just get “run over” by the full river and do not create a back-flow the way they do at normal river levels. The taller ones will, however, probably only get worse and more dangerous I guess, especially from the debree dragged down by the flood…
Similarly, the play holes on the river where WW boaters spend much of their time. These holes all but disappear with only a slight increase in the current in the one area I’m familiar with. Of course, flooded rivers have their own challenges -