Swimming: It can be a lifesaver

The lure of water during the summer can be enticing.

But it also can be deadly, as a couple of recent incidents attest.

On Saturday, two Wolf Point brothers drowned in an irrigation canal near St. Ignatius. One, an 8-year-old boy who could not swim, slipped into the canal off a footbridge. His 15-year-old brother dove in to try to save him, but they both perished.

Two weeks ago, aquatic tragedy on an even larger scale unfolded in Louisiana when six teenagers from two families drowned in a river while on a picnic.

None of the six could swim.

The common thread in these events, of course, is that inability to swim.

The Louisiana drownings prompted a resurrection of an alarming USA Swimming survey from this spring that found more than half of U.S. children have “low or no swimming ability.”

With the number of aquatic recreation opportunities everywhere — and the eagerness of children to partake of them — it’s disturbing that so many of our youths can’t swim.

This might be a call to action to parents to make sure their children receive swimming lessons.

Another lesson from these deaths is that water is dangerous.

It’s deceptively dangerous in waterways such as the irrigation canal where the two Montana boys died. The water can move swiftly and there’s no easy exit from the ditches. A year ago a Montana Highway Patrol trooper drowned in a different Lake County irrigation canal when he jumped in to try to save his dog.

Beyond the irrigation canals, it’s advisable for people to be wise to water.

In Glacier National Park, for example, the leading cause of visitor deaths is not bear maulings or traffic accidents or cliff falls — it’s water accidents.

Two weeks ago, a young boy who was swept down Glacier’s McDonald Creek was rescued by the quick action of Shirley Willis of Kalispell.

Her heroism is commendable, but that incident as well as the others underscores the need for people engaging in water recreation to be careful and competent in the water. You can’t always count on someone like Shirley to save you.