When chaos begins and tragedy happens: water safety experts warn of rip currents at Port Stanley

It was a bittersweet occasion Tuesday, as Elgin County raised a flag at its administration building to recognize Drowning Prevention Week.

It comes on the heels of a drowning in Port Stanley just over a week ago.

On July 14, a 14-year-old boy went missing while swimming near the pier. His body was pulled from the water two days later. Seventeen year old Ella Pys of Cambridge was on the beach with her family the day he disappeared. She was back at the beach Tuesday, the tragic event still on her mind.

“It was like scary because I know like it could have been me or the people I was with. But it was like, I don’t know, just really sad for the family,” she said.

Nathan McIntyre is a member of the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, and a former board member of the Great Lakes Water Safety Consortium. He says people specifically need to be aware of rip currents, which form around structures, and occur on windy days.

Port Stanley Pier (Bryan Bicknell/CTV News London)

“With the break wall and the pier here the water will become trapped on the shoreline. The water volume then increases on the shoreline. And as everyone knows, water, with gravity, needs to find its own equilibrium. And it needs to return to the lake, and it will however it wants to. What we’re noticing is that often, that return is an outflow of water that we refer to now as a rip current,” McIntyre explained.

Briar McCaw, who co-chairs the Elgin County Drowning Prevention Coalition, said that water safety is a collective responsibility.

“Just because you are in a supervised setting, which obviously does increase safety, but you still have to take your own precautions and educate yourself on the waterfront, and your friends and family. I think it’s a collective measure that we all have to be responsible for,” she said.

The World Health Organization now classifies a non-fatal drowning as a drowning.

According to the Drowning Prevention Coalition, there are 450 fatal drownings in Ontario every year, but an estimated four to five times as many non-fatal drownings.

Those in the business of saving lives say don’t take a chance with Mother Nature, especially when windy conditions are causing rip currents.

“If you get stuck in a rip-current it’s going to take you out into deeper water,” said McIntyre. “It’s in that moment an individual is going to try to swim against that current. They’re going to get tired out and they’re going to find themselves in deeper water. That’s when chaos begins and that’s when tragedy happens,” he warned.