Dangers
Rip currents are a source of danger for people in ocean and lake surf. They can be extremely dangerous, dragging swimmers away from the beach. Death by drowning comes following exhaustion while fighting the river or ocean current.
Although a rare event, rip currents can be deadly for non-swimmers as well: a person standing waist deep in water can be dragged into deeper waters, where they can drown if they are unable to swim and are not wearing a flotation device. Varying topography makes some beaches more likely to have rip currents; a few are notorious.
Rip currents cause more than 100 deaths annually in the United States. Rip currents cause 80% of rescues needed by beach lifeguards.
Read more about this topic: Rip Current
Famous quotes containing the word dangers:
“Anyone with a real taste for solitude who indulges that taste encounters the dangers of any other drug-taker. The habit grows. You become an addict.... Absorbed in the visions of solitude, human beings are only interruptions. What voice can equal the voices of solitude? What sights equal the movement of a single day’s tide of light across the floor boards of one room? What drama be as continuously absorbing as the interior one?”
—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)
“Fearlessness is a more than ordinary strength of mind, which raises the soul above the troubles, disorders, and emotions which the prospect of great dangers are used to produce. And by this inward strength it is that heroes preserve themselves in a calm and quiet state, and enjoy a presence of mind and the free use of their reason in the midst of those terrible accidents that amaze and confound other people.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)