A Pennsylvania couple drowned in a rip current while on vacation in Florida with their six children, according to authorities.
If you go into the ocean you should know a little bit about how to survive in it. Otherwise, you may not.
There is zero reliable ways to tell if there’s a rip from the beach…
The danger is under the waves, if there isn’t proper signage you won’t know until it’s probably too late. And everyone is different. The teens were able to swim to safety, the parents weren’t.
If you recognize you’re in a rip current, what you can try to do is swim parrell to the shore and then try to come in. It’s dangerous because the rip can’t be overcome by swimming directly in, you have to go around it.
But even if you know that, you might not remember, and it might not help.
The people that often die from this, are overconfident people like you who think it can’t happen to them because they’re smart.
I never claimed that I would survive. However, I know that the beaches I’ve been to in North Florida warn of rip currents and you can feel their effect very close to the shore. It’s a game you wouldn’t want to play when you’re already tired or dehydrated.
I’m not trying to pick a fight, and I know I’m probably coming off like a dick.
But it’s not just for your benefit, you’re downplaying a serious danger and victim blaming. This can happen to anyone at an unmarked beach, which is why government agencies monitoring this shit is important.
You can go do what you want. But don’t make people feel like it’s not a big deal.
Especially when the Gulf has weaker rips than every other coastline in North America, because it’s a gulf.
It’s like me saying no one has to worry about drowning because I only swim in kiddie pools. When the whole ocean is behind a rip it’s entirely different. There are still rips, and people do die from them in the Gulf. But they’re just not as strong as elsewhere. And part of the reason people die there, is they don’t take them serious.
