Children learn to swim at The Dive Spot on Friday, June 24, 2016, in Abilene, Texas, as part of the World’s Largest Swimming Lesson Event. (Nellie Doneva/The Abilene Reporter-News via AP)

By Elizabeth Armstrong Moore,  Newser Staff

There have been many reports lately about so-called “dry drowning,” “delayed drowning,” or “secondary drowning,” like when a boy in Texas died several days after swimming last month. But many experts, including emergency room doctors, the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and the CDC, say there’s a big problem with these terms, which are confusing and “unduly alarming” parents, reports Live Science. Drowning is defined as breathing problems following being submerged or immersed in a liquid, and it doesn’t necessarily kill a person. If it does, it can take minutes, hours, or even days, though lengthy delays are very rare. So-called dry drowning is, in short, just straight-up drowning. As one doctor describes it on her blog, drowning happens when someone aspirates, which is the technical term for something passing the trachea into the lungs.  Read more…

Source: http://www.newser.com

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The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office said a two-year-old boy died as a result of a suspected drowning in a swimming pool on the 4th of July.  Kevin Cortez III of Lockport was pronounced dead at a local hospital.

Source: Toddler dies of suspected drowning in swimming pool on July 4 | WWL

by: Ken Lemon Updated: Apr 7, 2017 – 10:20 AM

LINCOLN COUNTY, N.C. – Police in Lincoln County are investigating after a lifeguard drowned in the swimming pool of a YMCA early Thursday morning.Officers said 21-year-old Yesenia Jimenez Linares was found unconscious around 6:30 a.m. in the pool at the Lincoln County Family YMCA on East Gaston Street.Her co-workers couldn’t find her and called 911 to report that she was missing. Nine minutes later, they called back to say they had found her in the pool.“Do you know what happened?” the dispatcher asked the caller.”I have no idea,” the caller said. “We just found her in the pool. She is a lifeguard.”Her co-workers performed CPR. There were lifesaving devices at the YMCA, but employees struggled getting to them.”Do you have a defibrillator and AED (automated external defibrillator)?” the dispatcher asked.”We have them, but they can’t open the door,” the caller said.Once they were able to get the devices, they learned they couldn’t use them on her wet body. Paramedics took Linares to the hospital, where she died. “I never would have thought,” YMCA member Shane Hulett said.Hulett is one of the members who came to the YMCA on Thursday, only to learn it was closed.”For something to happen like that — it’s a tragedy,” Hulett said.Many of the YMCA’s employees spent the morning at the hospital with Linares’s family.  “Our members, our staff, our volunteers are all very close,” Mary Thompson, with the YMCA, said. Officers told Channel 9 they are treating the death as a drowning and that no foul play is suspected. The YMCA was closed for the remainder of Thursday.

Source: Police identify lifeguard who drowned at Lincolnton YMCA | WSOC-TV

Our Fathers Are DrowningSo much of drowning prevention is focused on children, and it should be. Well over six-hundred children under the age of 15 drown in the United States each year and it is a tragedy that deserves the attention of all of us. So visceral is the pain of the loss of a child that the news of these losses affects us and inspires us to act. We can hardly imagine anything worse. But there is one group of people that can imagine something worse and, every year – with painful regularity – they experience it. That group is our children themselves. Pain doesn’t know your age. When a young child loses a parent that too creates a wound that never fully heals.Each year, about two-thousand adult men drown in the U.S. and eight or nine-hundred of them are fathers of young children. So every year more than two-thousand children survive the drowning death of their dads and have to press on. This reality – that 60% of all drowning deaths are adult males – most of whom have children – seems to have gotten lost in the message. For their children’s sake, at least, we should renew our interest in this otherwise unspoken statistic.When I’m asked why it is true that adult males drown more than anyone else, the questions come with possible answers: Is it because they can’t swim? Do they take more risks? Is alcohol involved? Are they more likely to try and save others and then fail? My first answer is usually, “Yes – it’s partly all of those things and some others.” But, after years of looking at the data and sadly seeing it mostly flat-lined with no progress, I think the first and best thing we can do as a community to work this problem is to talk about it more.Trying to fix this by looking at all the causes of adult drowning would be overwhelming. It is too much to handle at once. This is true of childhood drowning as well. It’s the reason we need an “alliance” in the first place. These things have to be addressed on multiple fronts. Some groups work on the safe operation of pools and waterfronts; others on childhood education or courses on parenting. To fix the problem massive problem of adult-male drowning, we’re going to have to do the same. We need to talk about alcohol around water. We need to work on teaching more adults to swim. Men need to learn about aquatic risk. Rip current safety? Of course. But none of that will work if we don’t start by addressing the overarching problem: many men don’t believe they are as vulnerable as they actually are.Everything I’ve written so far is gleaned easily enough by searching the CDC and Census data. But why it’s happening? I’m sorry, but I have no real data to prove this theory, but I’ve seen it too many times to let the opinion go. We need a campaign that teaches men that their completely capable peers drown all the time and that they can too. They need to hear the stories of capable swimmers succumbing to cold water during early spring swims. They need to recognize that it isn’t about “tough” or “in shape” or even about their concepts of careful around water. Men need to learn that drowning is not just a kid problem. The water doesn’t know your age and does not discriminate. Men need to believe for themselves the drowning is something that can happen to them.The first part of solving any problem is recognizing one exists. Most of the people who will drown this year will be adult men. As an alliance, we have to talk about this more. We have to work on reaching the fathers of children as well as their moms. We have to talk about the whole problem of drowning. We have to talk about not just the fear of every parent, but the fear of many children as well. If we can get fathers to understand that they too can drown, we might just create more dads who stay around and then teach their children to be safe around the water as well.

Source: Our Fathers Are Drowning – Mario Vittone

With new hubby in tow the newly wed couple struggled to stay afloat as the weight of the garment almost drags them both under the water

Source: Bride nearly drowns as she jumps into swimming pool wearing huge wedding dress that weighs her down – Mirror Online

Source: Beware of seaweed, warns father of teen who drowned in Manitoba lake | CTV News

Former Healdsburg mayor, city councilman and real estate agent Kent Mitchell died

Source: Former Healdsburg mayor Mitchell dies at Russian River swimming hole | The Press Democrat