Howdy all from the AW Safety Chair.

i wanted to start a thread on this topic. I have never had to rescue an unconscious swimmer. My discussions on this with others suggests, first, this is a frustratingly slow and difficult thing to do.

Second, the ways to do this that work are:
1. pulling the swimmer into a raft
2. jumping in the water, getting hands on the victim, and either swimming the patient in solo or getting a tow or rope throw from shore.
3. clipping to the swimmer with a PFD rescue tether and towing the victim

On this last point, Phil Dereimer shared a story with me--he clipped his tether into the victim's PFD at the shoulder in a pool below a rapid and towed him in.

I would be worried about pulling the PFD over the victim's head in turbulent whitewater with this shoulder clip. In calmer water, i could see this working pretty well. the victim's arms would tend to swing to the his sides and secure the PFD as you tow, rather than swinging overhead and letting the PFD slide off.

Other clip options:
clip to the victim's PFD rescue harness on the back. I could see clipping my tether biner to the victim's tow tether if he had one.

clip to a web belt if he has one. I think this would be solid, but it could create a lot of drag for the tow.

lasso the end of your tether and loop it around a wrist or around both ankles.

Please share your thoughts and stories. I plan to dig through the rescue archives and post any nuggets I find.

Cheers, Eric Nies

Rescuing unconscious swimmers would be something very good to practice occasionally. You don't have much time to figure it out if it happens.

In 1998, my friend Walt drowned on Dinkey Creek, just upstream of where I and another were getting ready to portage. When his body flushed free of the hole that drowned him it floated over a falls to us, recirculated briefly then floated across the pool towards the next drop. We had seconds to react, but Bill Russell, upstream next to the falls, threw a rope perfectly along the path of the body. I dove out, grabbed the rope and with in a stroke or so got Walt. I did not have time to do any clipping or anything, but did not think about it either. In retrospect, I might have been able to wrap the rope around his body and tie a knot or clip it or something. That would really be worth practicing.

Instead, I held the rope in one hand and my friend's body in the other. The rope went taught immediately and that twisted my body and arm around. I held his body in my left arm, I think and the rope in my right. I was able to hold on, but my right arm ended up twisted behind me in a sort of hammer lock while I desperately held on.

The rope swung us in, but not far enough to escape the current. We were just feet away from an eddy, but the current was cranking on my arm and I could only hold him. I couldn't get his face out of the water, and I couldn't look upstream to see what Bill was doing. I have never asked Bill whether he could have gotten us in or whether he was stuck just trying to hold us. I just remember looking at Walt with his head down in the water and thinking, "This isn't doing him any good."

I let go of the rope cause I couldn't feel any movement towards shore. I swam like a one armed scared madman towards that eddy and watched it slowly slip past. That was really scary, but on the other side of a boulder was one more eddy and we were close enough that I got into that one. If I had not made that, I would have let go and swam for my own life.

If I had wrapped the rope around him, under his arms I would have had both of my arms free and would have had more time to deal with things. I might have been able to swim him in or swam in myself and help Bill pull him in. Having the roped tied to the body would have given us more options at that point and made it a less dangerous situation. I would not have had to worry about us both going over Cherry Bomb.

Paul