Cold likely hastened deaths

LAKE LOUISE — When two brothers drowned in Lake Louise Friday, it was immediately apparent to emergency responders what went wrong.

Neither Jeffery Kirkpatrick, 56, or his brother, Steven Kirkpatrick, 49, both of Cleveland, Tenn., was wearing a life jacket. Neither appeared to be a particularly good swimmer or a particularly experienced boater, said Lake Louise EMS chief Corky Matthews, and the water temperature was 47 degrees. There were also life vests in the boat that weren’t being worn when the men drowned.

“They were hot and uncomfortable and they took them off,” Matthews said. “We’d all do the same thing.”

When the boat lurched, Steven Kirkpatrick fell overboard and his brother jumped in to save him. Steven was pulled from the water within 15 minutes, but attempts to revive him were unsuccessful. Jeffery Kirkpatrick was pulled from the bottom of the lake 45 minutes after he went in.

“They were from out of state, they didn’t have experience with our cold water,” Matthews said.

Even so, Matthews said it could happen to anybody.

“The natural reaction, it doesn’t matter where you’re from, is that immediate intake of breath” when hitting cold water, Matthews said.

Cliff Silvers, chief of the borough’s Dive Rescue Team, has the same suspicion about the water. When a person hits water that cold, he said, he gasps.

“A lot of times that breath of air is going to have water in it,” Silvers said.

And that water can lead to a wet or dry drowning. Dry drowning is when temperature makes a person’s muscles tense up and he or she actually suffocates, Silvers said.

Silvers said another mistake a lot of people make is that they struggle too hard and wind up tiring themselves out. A better approach, if you think there’s someone on the way to help, is to get into the HELP position — Heat Exposure Lessening Position. It’s like sitting in a chair, with your knees up to your chest, while trying not to move around too much. The idea is that the water between your knees and torso will heat up if you can keep it still.

Both Silvers and Matthews said the Kirkpatricks might have had a better chance of surviving if they’d been children.

“If that had been a child, with youth on their side, we might have been able to resurrect them,” Matthews said.

Silvers explained the science behind it. Children cool down faster.

“It shunts blood from the head and the outer arms and legs into the core of the body,” Silvers said. “That can throw them into hypothermia quicker than an adult, they’re actually more salvageable than an adult.”

He said that because of those effects of cold water, state protocol is to give a person an hour and a half underwater before “calling code” and declaring him or her dead.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.