Members of Terrace Search and Rescue Water rescue Team recently took part in a hypothermia workshop called “Beyond Cold Water Boot Camp”. The workshop was hosted by the Canadian Safe Boating Council and British Columbia Lifesaving Society and presented by (aka Dr. Popsicle) a professor from the University of Manitoba
“ Dr. principle of” is a world leading researcher in the field of hypothermia, and is well known to Canadians for having appeared on the Rick Mercer Report.
The workshop covered hypothermia science, extraction techniques, packaging techniques and hypothermia treatment.
Some participants signed up to be “in water subjects”. The temperature of the Fraser River was 5 °C and 5 subjects entered the water in various levels of protection. Two of the participants were wearing only one layer of clothing and when removed from the water were shivering uncontrollably and showing the early signs of hypothermia. These participants were extracted and treated for hypothermia according to Dr. Geisbrecht’s instruction.
Note: Special Thanks to Hawkair for providing Air transportation to Vancouver, without the generous support of HawkAir Terrace SAR attendance at the workshop would not have been possible.
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Picture 1 Workshop Participants pose with Dr. Gordon Geisbric(back row-right).Terrace Search and Rescue Team members Dave Jephson and Dwayne Sheppard were two of the participants for the immersion test (Dwayne Sheppard front row –left) |
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Picture 2 Immersion participants enter the water under the protection of SAR trained rescue swimmers. |
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Picture 3 Cold Water immersion participant Dwayne Sheppard feels the effects of coldwater immersion. “You lose body heat 25 times faster in water, your body begins to shiver uncontrollably; when removed from the water the effects of the wind and air cool your body even more”. |
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Picture 5 Subjects are removed from the water using various extraction techniques, picture 5 shows one of the test subjects being removed from the water with the aid of a stretcher specially designed to float in water. |
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Picture 6 When the subjects are removed from the water they are wrapped in a layer of plastic and placed in a sleeping bag to protect them from the cooling effects of the environment. |
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Picture 7 The hypothermia subject is transport to a suitable location when the wet clothing can be removed, the subjects is dried and placed back into a dry sleeping bag with a re-warming device to warm the patient. |
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Picture 8 The heating device is a HEATPAC personal heater available in British Columbia by Emergco Technical Solutions. The device emits warm heat to heat the hypothermia patients torso and other areas of high heat transfer i.e neck, under the arms, etc. |
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Picture 9 The patients is properly packaged to prevent re-cooling, the heating device also works to re-warm the patient before being transported to hospital. |
It was interesting to feel the effects of immersion in 5 degree water. Many people are under the belief that if you are submerged in water in winter, especially if you fall through ice that you only have a few minutes to live. The truth is that you can potential survive up to one hour or more before succumbing to the effects of hypothermia. Dr Gordon Geisbric teaches the coldwater survival techniques with the aid of the 1-10-1 principle (see below)
1-10-1
- 1 minute: it may take a minute to get control of your breathing, Work at this first. Panic must be avoided. In the initial plunge try to prevent your head from going under. Obviously, if you have any choice in the matter, a slow entry is best. Keep your mouth closed. Rescue personnel are trained to cover their mouth and nose when they get in the water. If you breath in water you are likely to be in big trouble.
- 10 minutes: you have only about ten minutes to use your hands and arms for swimming, self rescue or to assist others rescuing you. The more active you are the less time you have: make the time count. If you have ice claws get to the best ice (probably where you came from) and use them. If you don’t have them, get to the best ice edge, swim your feet up behind you, lift your upper body on your elbows and use frog kicks or double leg kicks to push you out on the ice. It may take several tries. Click here for more on clawless self rescue.
- 1 hour: IF you have flotation (a life jacket, float coat, float suit, etc) you have about an hour before you become unconscious. If you don’t have a way to keep your head out of the water without swimming you may drown in as little as 10 minutes as a result of swimming incapacitation. In some cases, people without floatation have saved themselves by letting their wet sleeves freeze to the ice: holding them on the surface until rescue arrived. Draping yourself over a half submerged iceboat has worked as well. As a practical matter a shore mounted rescue is likely to take half an hour or more which is one of several reasons why flotation is so important.
