Heat stroke; someone’s career is in jeopardy for not monitoring his fluid intake.
Yeah, one of the problems with heat exhaustion/stroke is that at some point a person doesn’t feel thirsty, and if they are not experienced with heat or don’t have someone to nag them into drinking more water, they can get into real trouble.
As an old West Point mom, I guarantee you that the fluid intakes are monitored constantly, with the speakers calling out the heat index every 15 minutes or so.
My son explained to us that the upperclassmen stopped them during exercise, and made them drink until they “sloshed” when the heat index indicated it was necessary.
My guess is that this cadet was out in the field, maybe alone?, had plenty of water with him, and just neglected to do it. I hope this isn’t the case, because he seemed like he had enough prior training in high school sports to understand the importance of hydration.
But, we do not really know yet if heat/dehydration was the cause. There are deaths on the sports playing field every year, caused by undiagnosed rare heart defects that have not been picked up on the standard tests.
You would not believe how much care is taken to keep the cadets safe at West Point. My son lost a lot of weight during “beast barracks”, and the upperclassmen in charge would weigh him daily, and bring him additional food outside of the regular meals to try to help him keep from losing any more.
They do feed the cadets a humongeous amount of calories a day, but some of them lose weight at the beginning anyway, until they begin to put on some muscle.
They take it very seriously, and this is a tragedy. I weep for his parents, who have lost so much!
Heat stroke; someone’s career is in jeopardy for not monitoring his fluid intake.
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My first thought too.
Probably not ... it was an unfortunate incident but basic military training is arduous and occasionally a death does occur. I survived 13 weeks of basic at Parris Island, I was there April into July. Recruits arriving in June & July were always more at risk ... even though training was adjusted allowing them to acclimate ... most summers the rigorous schedule and heat claimed a victim or two, in spite of reasonable precautions.