What every boater needs to know about Electric Shock Drowning.
http://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2013/july/electric-shock-drowning-explained.asp
Posted on 05/22/2017 5:21:43 PM PDT by SMGFan
The Saturday before Easter, two colleagues, Shelly Darling, 34, and Elizabeth Whipple, 41, visited Lake Tuscaloosa to soak up the sun on a family dock. A few hours later, family members discovered the women's possessions, but saw no sign of the Alabama sunbathers. They called the police and after a search, their bodies were found in the lake. When recovering them, a rescuer felt a jolt of electricity. According to AL.com, the autopsies revealed the two women died of electric shock drowning, a lesser known cause of drowning.
Electric shock drowning happens when electricity from a dock, boat, pool, hot tub or marina seeps into the water and electrifies it. As swimmers enter the water the electricity paralyzes their muscles, causing them to drown. What's more, trying to rescue someone experiencing electric shock drowning remains difficult because anyone entering the water receives a disabling stun.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
What a horrible tragedy. Who woulda thunk that would have ended their lives. Sad. What a waste. Prayers up!
You hear about this every summer.
Make sure your electrical system is properly grounded y’all.
If its a lake...isn’t it touching the ground already?
Check those GFCIs.
I, for one, was pleased when we went from electrical to pneumatic drills while building residential docks on the Chesapeake Bay.
When I started grad school, I decided to just live in my 35 foot Jayco travel trailer. I rented a spot in a nice lot and had my electricity turned on.
I discovered that I had to do the connection myself. I had no idea how to but a neighbor did it for me. Everything worked fine for about a week when I noticed a shock when I touched something.
another grad student happened to be there at the time and he looked and told me the connection was wrong. He redid it and everything was fine.
I still wonder how it worked for a week before showing up tho.
Last week George Noory said that some years ago his aunt was electrocuted when the radio fell in the bathtub.
Water is not a perfect conductor, it has some resistance. The purer the water is, the more resistance it has. I worked on a radar that used purified water for insulation. There will be a voltage gradient in the water from the voltage source, to the point where the voltage has dropped to zero.
I have read about an alarm that can be mounted on a dock that will detect this danger. Sounds like a good idea.
Perhaps just partially related; I was swimming in a reasonably large lake in Vietnam during the war, and some guys were throwing grenades into the water about 350-400 meters away. Upon each explosion, I could immediately feel a tingle immediately, all up and down that side of my body facing toward each grenade going off.
I took that to be water molecules displaced by each explosion.
Seemingly harmless, but rather an eerie feeling.
The reporter has no clue how electricity works. Electricity does not “seep into” water. Bodies of water ARE grounded.
The problem is that the dock (must have been metal) was electrified and not grounded. Current flowed through the victims when they were touching both the dock and the water.
While guarding Namo Bridge on Hwy 1 north of DaNang, we’d throw 1/4lb blocks of TNT off every once in a while at night to ‘discourage’ NVA/VC frogmen who might be trying to blow the bridge.
Too close and the shock wave “will mess you up real good!”
What every boater needs to know about Electric Shock Drowning.
http://www.boatus.com/seaworthy/magazine/2013/july/electric-shock-drowning-explained.asp
Exactly right, and this is why electric shock drowning is much more of a problem in fresh water than salt. Salt water is a better conductor than the human body and the current dissipates quickly. In fresh water, the human body (a big bag of salty water) is the better conductor and so the current seeks the path of least resistance - you.
If I haven’t said it before: Welcome Home!
They were fishing. ARVNs did it all the time.
As you can see in the diagram from post 15, most of the electrical current returns to the source in the neutral leg. But if an electrical load like a motor has some resistance to ground in the boat, some of that current will return to the source to the source ground first through the water then to the Earth and then to the source's ground.
Since the women were close to the boat or dock, they were a path for the electrical current too. It does NOT take very many milliamps to cause paralysis.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.