by Ralph Gardave
You may be thinking that this article has little relevance to you as you are not one of those “crazy” people who paddle in winter weather conditions. If you missed my last article in Qayaq you may wish to read it, as it will bring relevance to this one. The Peel Marine Unit considers any rescue in Lake Ontario to be a “Cold Water Rescue” when the surface temperatures are 20° C or colder. For Lake Ontario that usually means any month other than July, August and September. Most of us paddle in waters farther north and therefore the window of time is even shorter.
I recently had the opportunity to take part in a workshop sponsored by the Canadian Safe Boating Council titled “Cold Water Immersion: Prevention, Rescue, and Treatment”. The workshop was well attended and included members of the RCMP, various police force members, military personnel, Fire and Rescue members, several ORCA members and three kayakers.
This article is not intended to be a definitive guide dealing with cold water conditions. Rather it is intended to highlight the fact that we paddle in “cold water” more often than we may think and the potential we have to quickly find ourselves in adverse situations. Many of us may have misinformation as to the challenges that we may encounter should we find ourselves swimming for any length of time in most of the waters that we paddle. I’m personally aware that there are highly skilled GLSKA members that have faced these challenges, some of whom have permanent reminders to this day of the experience that have caused them strong memories and even some injuries that may limit the extent of their paddling activity permanently.
The course was presented by Dr. Gordon Giesbrecht who operates the Laboratory for Exercise and Environmental Med- icine (University of Manitoba) where he studies human re- sponses to exercise/work in extreme environments. Dr. Giesbrecht is a professor of thermophysiology and is often referred to as Dr. Popsicle due to his extensive work in cold water environments. Dr. Giesbrecht, in his book Hypothermia Frostbite and other Cold Injuries, defines cold water as having a temperature below the range of 20° to 25°C.
Hypothermia will probably not kill you. You will likely be incapacitated and/or unconscious long before that condition occurs. If you are fortunate enough to survive long enough for hypothermia to set in it may be the thing that saves your life but you need the knowledge to have that opportunity. Most fatalities in cold water occur within the first 10 to 12 minutes of immersion. This was a major revelation for me in taking this course.
To reach the clinical definition of Hypothermia requires exposure to ice water in excess of 30 minutes. Incorrect understanding of how long it takes for the onset of this condition often results in panic and poor decision making that can lead to a bad situation becoming worse, even fatal, very quickly. Cold water immersion fatalities usually occur long before the onset of Hypothermia. In real life experiments swimming ability in ice water can cease in just over 5 minutes with often little more than 15 m of distance covered by a reasonably fit person.
Initial immersion causes the Cold Shock Experience. This is occurs within the first 1-2 minutes of exposure. It is characterized by gasping and hyperventilating. If this occurs while your head is underwater the results can be immediate drowning. It is important to know that this phase will pass quickly and your primary concern is to gain control your breathing and not to panic. The second stage of cold water immersion is cold incapacitation. This phase usually occurs within the first 10 minutes. This is the length of time in which meaningful self-movement will be possible. Unconsciousness and drowning are the likely outcomes following this phase. Therefore this 10-minute window is the maximum time that you have to get yourself out of the water or create a sustainable situation to survive longer. For us kayakers that probably means a successful rescue that gets us back into our upright boats or securing ourselves to the boat in a way that will promote upright flotation when we become unconscious or unable to move meaningfully. I did not include swimming to shore here due to the short distance that we are likely to swim successfully in cold water. When you swim you expose more of your body to the cold water and the elevated cardiovascular activity promotes more of your blood flow to the extremities cooling you even faster that if you remained stationary.
The slogan of Dr. Giesbrecht “ONE MINUTE – TEN MINUTES – ONE HOUR or 1-10-1” provides a simple framework to understand your situation and the limitations that you have to take action. After becoming immersed in cold water you have:
- One Minute to get your breathing under control
- Ten Minutes of useful movement (out of the water or create stable situation)
- One Hour before becoming unconscious due to hypothermia
A good acronym to remember in any adverse situation is
STOP
S – Stop
T – Think
O – Observe
P – Plan
It is my hope that this article has peaked your curiosity to seek out the knowledge to better prepare, prevent, and if necessary deal with cold water immersion. I feel that this is an important topic as virtually all of us will expose ourselves, to some level of this risk during our normal paddling season. Additional comprehensive information may be found at www.coldwaterbootcamp.com or inDr. Giesbrecht’s book Hypothermia Frostbite and other Cold Injuries.