The King County Sheriff’s Office Marine Rescue team is getting gear ready to respond to what they expect to be an active weekend on the water.
Runoff still has rivers running fast and the higher temperatures have not been enough to warm the waters around western Washington to the point where water is still cold enough to cause a shock to the system.
“If you’re just jumping into it, you get that cold water shock, which is that gasping sensation, which is where we see drownings from, where people ingest water and then they never resurface,” said Deputy Nate Greiert, who is on the KCSO marine rescue unit.
Greiert expects Memorial Day weekend to be the time people drop their paddleboards or boats in the water for the first time of the year. He urges people to check to make sure they have a noise maker, life jackets for everyone on the water, and make sure boats have the fire extinguishers, blowers tested, and a boater safety card.
“Having some sort of communication to call for help if you need it, and understanding that help is not immediate. It takes us a little bit of time to get to the boats, depending on what body of water you’re at,” Greiert said.
An added hazard this year—debris from the winter, especially the record-breaking December flooding.
“There is still a ton of debris,” Greiert said, “Some of them range in logs that you know are five feet long to there was one the other day it looked like something out of The Redwood Forest had washed out of there.”
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