Intentionally vague use of “emergency situation” to encourage people to share. If you handle emergency situations as a profession, what’s a particularly interesting one.
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- 2 months
I was aimlessly swimming underwater in the deep end of a backyard pool when I saw an infant on the bottom, next to one of the side walls. I grabbed it, rushed it to the surface, and sat it on the edge. Her parents quickly came running. The kid was fine. It seems she instinctively held her breath once submerged and wasn’t under very long. The parents weren’t watching (they were in lawn chairs 10-20 feet away) and nobody really knows how long she was under. I’m still struck by the parents’ neglect. Also that the kid had no buoyancy and sank like a stone.
- cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish2 months
First off, good on you from the rescue!
As a parent, I get both sides. It’s absolutely horrifying, but so easy to lose focus. You can start chatting, and not realise you’re not tracking the child. You can also both assume the other has eyes on them.
It’s better to assume problems like this as systematic, rather than personal failures. If a small child has access to the water, they should be explicitly monitored. If you can’t (as a group) do that, then they shouldn’t have easy access to the water. You can also train children in water safety from a young age. Babies can be taught self rescue from around when they can crawl.
It’s so easy to lose focus. It requires constant concentration, at a time when your life has been turned upside down, and you are often suffering from sleep deprivation. A (apparently) calm ‘normal’ situation and your brain can relax back and switch off from parenting mode.
- 2 months
It’s horrifying when you learn about the number of pool drowning deaths a year. It’s in the thousands in the US alone.
- 2 months
Basically this exact thing happened to me as a child. I was fine but it is one of my earliest memories. Good job!
- 2 months
Swimming in my Grandmas pool as a kid was so much fun. But when I was little, and didn’t know how to swim, my mom put pool floaty rings on my arms and let me have at it in the shallow end. Well I wanted to be like the big kids jumping in the deep end, so I did. with my arms straight up. Those pool floaties slipped right off and I was at the bottom in a second. Luckily my Grandma saw, jumped in and got me.
I love my Grandma.
- 2 months
Not really a ‘real emergency’, but some time ago electricity in all my zone (a radius of 50-60km) went down for several hours, so even cell towers, ISP routing centers, ecc, were out of power. Not a real emergency, but I had 2 small meshtastic devices, and it was awesome to be able to discuss with people in other nearby cities and communicate ‘offline’!
- 2 months
That reminds me of the cruise ship builder on the Ems that managed to switch off Europe’s entire power grid in seconds.
- 2 months
The one in 2006? Not the cruise ship builder’s fault, but the system operators of the grids. They failed to communicate changes in the plan to each other, and then fucked up when things started to go wrong.
- 2 months
The cruise ship builders told the grid about the change in time too late, though, not really giving them enough time to calculate everything.
- 2 months
It’s been a long time, but last one was about 20 years ago. Me and my friend Danielle had just finished our open water scuba diving courses together, and went to do our first dive with a group from the dive shop - including one of our instructors who was leading it.
It was a shore dive, we all walk in in our drysuits and I stupidly drop my mask and lose it in the silty water. Danielle starts swimming around looking for it, while most of us are chatting above the surface. We’re in about 3’ of water at this point on the beach, I’m literally standing up next to her, so danger is the last thing on my mind.
Suddenly someone asks me if Danielle is ok, I turn around just as she stops moving, grab her by the bcd and pull her up. She’s blue and not breathing. The instructor is already on his way over, gives her some rescue breaths and she immediately comes back. We pull her to the shore and she’s coughing up water, paramedics roll up shortly after and take her to the hospital just in case.
She has gotten air stuck in the boots of her dry suit and was stuck inverted. Instead of doing the recovery roll we were trained, or inflating her bcd, she panicked and as a result somehow lost her mouth piece.
She never dived in cold water again, although we did go to belize several months later to do a bunch of diving. I kept up the cold water diving.
It really made me appreciate how panicking can completely fuck you over, and made me a very safety conscious diver. I always stay close to my buddy and keep a close eye on them.
- 2 months
When we went to belize, a dead diver had been pulled out the week before from the blue hole. It had been down there a couple years, hands and head long gone, but identified by the rented camera still attached to it.
When i went diving in Bali our dive lead was ex military, and would tell us stories of doing body recoveries where they’d surface and just immediately go to a hyperbaric chamber. That just seems asinine to me.
I’ve gone diving around 200 times, it’s absolutely gorgeous and I’d recommend it to anyone, but it’s not something you should take risks while doing.
- Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish2 months
A woman had a seizure on the sidewalk. I kept her in the recovery position (she was already on her side) and managed to slip a bag under her head because she kept banging it on the ground. Called 911. Figured everything was as good as it could be given situation, she wasn’t going to hurt herself any further and help was coming.
Then a cop walked up and tried to pull her onto her back while I was trying to keep her on her side. I yelled to back off, he yelled back, argued with me about whether I witnessed a seizure, I refused to let him touch her, EMTs arrived shortly after.
Fuck cops.
- 2 months
My 9 year old woke me up before 6 on a weekend saying “Dad, dad, there’s an emergency!”
I got up to find the bathroom covered in sand and water and a toilet full of sand and shattered glass after a jar had been dropped in it.
Honestly, I had no idea what was going on, and yet complete certainly that someone was doing things they were not supposed to be doing and that the fact that I had to be awake right now means that this was going to be a bad day.
Don’t worry though, there’s a happy ending. We sold the child to a gang of poachers and regained all the free time and peace of mind we’ve been missing out on. And with the profits I plan to buy a Miata.
- faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish2 months
Did CPR on an overdose until somebody showed up with Narcan. Dude lived.
- 2 months
This past weekend.
A wildfire started up a few miles from my parents house in the western US. Winds were fairly high and it was well above 95F, so in a day and a half it went from a sprig of smoke to 10,000 acres fuelling its own weather.
I have spent the entire weekend helping them prep their property under some extreme stress. We ripped out every bit of brush and weed from the house perimeter, cut down 6 trees that were too close, ran a tractor with a disk to start building ground fire lines around the base of their hill, and ran as many water sprinklers on the lawn and surrounding terrain and trees as we could to improve their ability to resist ignition. And on top of that have gotten them packed and their livestock and farm equipment all moved to pastures well out of the treeline.
All of this while the sun was completely obscured by smoke, to the point where I had the lights on the tractor. Hell, we could HEAR the fire from their house. It was like a jet engine was running just over the west ridge. You could see tree crowns torching 150+ feet in the air.I’ve probably worked like 45+ hours in the last 4 days. I’m so tired dude.
Luckily, whether by sheer happenstance or force of a god unknowing, the wind has held in the right direction and the fire front facing their house has been very mild since Saturday night, and wildfire crews have had a chance to build dozer containment lines there. We’re still on a hair trigger but we are cautiously optimistic they’re going to make it through without any of their land burning.
Fuck global warming dude
- 2 months
What a terrifying experience! I’m glad you’re safe for now. Praying your family and farm stay whole.
- 2 months
Mask up! Breathing smoke is bad for your lungs. Good luck.
