"Jim" had a great post on the Boatertalk forum that brings up some key rescue points:

1) Avoiding rescues (in part, by knowing where your boat should be and being able to put in there) is much better than performing rescues.

2) Self rescue is your first line of defense — keep trying, never give up. Paddling with a group is your second line of defense. Even so, your group may not be able to reach you in a timely fashion (i.e., while you're still breathing).

3) Learning the physical skills to perform in a rescue happens MUCH earlier than learning when and how to apply them in a specific situation. To my knowledge, no one has figured out a magic way to teach how to act when bad stuff happens. Trainers from the military, fire, EMS, police.... organizations have all sought out ways to make this training easier, and the only effective method they have found is practice. Even then, there is no perfect way to predict how someone will react.

4) Some people instinctively do the right thing in a rescue. Many people can be taught to do the right thing. Some never get it.

5) Good judgment comes from experience.

6) Experience comes from bad judgment. When somethinggoes bad, it's worth the time to go back and figure out what happened, how to avoid it in the future, and how you might have reacted differently. Reading through Charlie Walbridge's accident reports is a thoroughly depressing, but very worthwhile, activity. Looking over other people's bad experiences helps you learn from them, without suffering their consequences. Debriefing your own rescues with an independent person is a great exercise — an outside eye may see things you missed, and help you do better in the future. Tunnel vision is a real problem in rescue situations, and an outside uninvolved eye can help you see things you might have missed.

7) Scenarios are an excellent way to practice and develop your "rescue sense". The ACA recently developed a scenario based rescue class. The outline should be on their website (acanet.org) soon, and classes should start being offered within the next year. Compare how often you execute an eddy turn to how often you carry out a rescue — it's no wonder that eddy turns happen without thought, and rescues seem to be a cluster ####!

8) Position helps in a rescue. Once you're downstream of a victim, it's hard to get back up to them. If you're upstream of them, you can see the event evolving and can often start moving to help before the badness actually happens.

9) Take care of yourself and don't make the situation worse. Before you leap in, take a few seconds and develop a plan — preferably one that minimizes the likelihood of harm to you, your team and the victim. A successful rescue is one where (a) you go home in the same (or better) condition that you left it, and (b) you can sleep with a clear conscience when you review your actions. Bad outcomes don't always mean you did something wrong. Your first priority has to be taking care of yourself. Recognize what you can and can't do, based on your skills and location. If you're downstream and can't reach the victim, you can be downstream safety. If your boating skills aren't adequate to safely rescue a person, maybe you can go after the boat or paddle. If you're on a river at the very limits of your skill, maybe your best bet is staying out of the way and not becoming another victim.

Take home messages:

I. Take care of yourself.
II. Recognize and avoid hazards.
III. Think before you act.
IV. Practice your skills so you can use them when you need them.

By Robin Pope

From The Eddy Line, August 2005

- Adapted from a posting to the CCC email list.

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