Have A Safe Swim!!

Here are some tips for being safe at the beach or pool:

• Choose a beach or pool where there is a lifeguard. Your chances of drowning at a location where there is no guard are five times higher, according to the U.S. Lifesaving Association.
• Learn to swim, and have your kids take swimming lessons as well. Often you can find lessons through community education or local schools, held at local pools. 
• Walk into the water if it is a new location for you. See if there are any drop-offs, and how soon the water becomes too deep for you to stand.

 

• Always jump into the water, feet first: don’t dive in head first. A neck injury can be very serious. You can jam your neck in such a way as to injure your spinal cord, causing paralysis that will be permanent. You can also hit your head hard enough to cause a brain injury.

•  Wear old tennis shoes or water shoes if the bottom of the lake is ‘sticky’ or muddy so that you can get better traction.

• Alcohol obviously affects your judgment and reaction time, but did you know that it can also alter your body temperature? Check this out from the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics:

Contrary to what is believed, alcohol may make you feel warmer but it actually lowers the temperature of the body. When alcohol enters the blood, it causes the blood vessels to widen. More blood flows to the skin's surface. The drinker's body temperature drops as the increased blood flow to the surface allows body heat to escape. People who drink alcohol in cold weather to get warm actually accomplish the opposite. Thus, if you hop into a lake to cool off when you have had alcohol, you will get even colder.

• Statistics at the Center for Disease Control show that of all drowning victims, 80% are male, and children ages 1 to 4 swimming in ‘kiddie’ pools at home make up 30% of all childhood accidental deaths.

For further data you can check out their website:

http://www.cdc.gov/HomeandRecreationalSafety/Water-Safety/waterinjuries-factsheet.html#prevented

• Be sure to use life jackets when riding in a boat – Put Them On!
• Other toys to use in the water such as Fun Noodles, ‘water wings,’ and inflatable rafts are not a substitute for a life jacket. You can let your child play in the water wearing a life jacket, but don’t use that as an excuse to pay no attention. When it comes to playing in water, You should always be no more than an arm's length from your children.

Wear sun block that is waterproof, and re-apply every 2 hours. Make sure the lotion is not past its expiration date. You need to apply approximately 1/4 cup of sunblock in order for it to be effective.

Enjoy the summer, and be safe!

Floods

Seeing the mess created by massive flooding in Louisiana lately, we looked into the causes and effects floods have on peoples' lives.

A flood can occur, obviously, when too much rain falls and the ground can't absorb it quickly enough. If it happens very quickly with little warning, it's called a 'flash flood.'

But flooding also happens if a dam or levee breaks, or after heavy snowfall melts.


The area where flooding has happened or is expected to happen is called the "floodplain."

We have seen flooding in Minnesota, and North and South Dakota. These have usually been associated with a river overflowing its banks. Sandbags are assembled and piled up as people try to prevent the flood from reaching their homes.

Here is the progress of flooding in Louisiana and southern states earlier this month:

Moving water has a lot of power. As it moves through whatever outlets it can find, it will erode dirt underneath buildings and trees and drag all of it along as it goes. The water may contain sewage and always contains bacteria, and can also be carrying pieces of buildings or harmful trash that can injure people trying to slog through it. Frequently, this results in contaminated drinking water.

When a home is damaged by water, the greatest damage is probably mold that will grow on surfaces that never dry out. Replacing the whole building is the only way to start over; there is nothing to rid that house and its contents of all the water and resulting mold and bacteria from forming.


Building any kind of structure on unstable ground is never a good idea. This would include roads, homes, and bridges. People continue to re-build too close to the shore of the ocean after their homes are destroyed, most often by hurricanes and the huge amounts of water that flood beyond the shores. This also holds true for building too close to a river or a lake. 

Built with bricks but probably on shifting ground.

Even in areas where you might not expect flooding, there has been a trend in home building where the builders attempt to fill in an area that is naturally wetlands with dirt in order to build on top of it. This is unwise as the wetland will always be unstable.





Here is National Geographic's information about flooding: http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/natural-disasters/floods-safety-tips/


What careers are involved in studying floods and making structures safer?

• Engineering
• Geologist
• Hydrologist
• Meteorologist
• Architects
• Building trades