Lifeguards Warn: A Child Can Vanish Underwater in Seconds
After a string of drownings at lakes, pools and canals this summer, lifeguards are urging parents to keep constant watch and explaining why cold water, alcohol and unguarded spots are the biggest risks.
- Lifeguards warn that a child can slip underwater in a matter of seconds, usually without a single sound.
- Serbia has recorded a string of drownings at lakes, pools and canals this summer.
- Emergency services report a rise in call-outs to swimming spots during the summer months.
- The advice: constant supervision of children, and no unguarded spots, cold-water plunges or alcohol before swimming.
How long can a child be underwater before someone thinks to look? The answer is uncomfortable: a few seconds is enough. Drowning does not look the way it does in films. There is no waving of arms, no shouting, no splashing. A child simply goes quiet and slips below the surface, and a parent who glanced at a phone for a moment hears nothing at all.
That is the message lifeguards have been repeating almost daily this summer. After a string of drownings at lakes, pools and canals across Serbia, their appeal is simple and specific. Supervision has to be constant, not occasional. Swimming at unguarded spots carries a risk most bathers underestimate until it is too late.
Why do drownings happen on the hottest days?
Summer is a paradox. When it is hottest and the most people are in the water, that is also when there are the most call-outs. Emergency services confirm it season after season. Calls from swimming spots climb the moment the temperature passes thirty degrees.
Part of the explanation is in the water itself. The surface of a lake or canal can feel pleasant, yet just a metre down the water can be icy. Plunging into cold water triggers muscle cramp and what is known as cold shock, when the body suddenly loses control of its breathing. A strong swimmer stops being a strong swimmer in that instant. Fatigue, sun and dehydration sap strength further, and alcohol before a swim pushes the caution threshold exactly where it should not go.
With children the story is even shorter. They do not struggle, do not call out and do not make a scene. That is why lifeguards insist on one rule that sounds tedious but saves lives: when a child is in the water, one adult watches only that child and nothing else.
Unguarded spots are a problem of their own. No lifeguard, no marked depth, no one who knows the terrain. Canals and wild beaches hide holes, silt and underwater currents that are invisible from the shore. That is exactly where most of the accidents we read about during the summer months happen.
What exactly keeps a summer safe?
There are no complicated instructions here, only habits. A few simple moves cut the risk to a minimum.
First, choose guarded swimming spots with lifeguards. If a place has no one on duty and no marked depth, it is not a swimming spot, it is a hazard.
Second, do not dive straight in when you are overheated. Wet your body slowly, let it adjust, and only then swim. That minute of patience is the cheapest insurance there is.
Third, alcohol and water do not mix. A beer in the sun seems harmless, but it slows reactions and distorts your sense of your own strength. Save the swim for when you are sober.
Fourth, keep a child in sight and within arm’s reach at all times. No message on a phone is more important than that. If several adults are present, agree who is on watch for that minute, so you never end up with everyone assuming someone else is looking.
Fifth, if you see someone drowning, do not jump in blindly after them. Throw a float, a branch or a bottle, call for help and a lifeguard. A drowning person’s panic can drag down the very person trying to help.
Drowning is one of the quietest accidents there is, and that is precisely why attention prevents it better than bravery does. The next time you are by the water with a child, ask yourself honestly: are you really watching, or only think you are?
