A real drowning victim almost never screams, does not wave their arms calling for help, and does not make the scene you see in the movies. They stay with their mouth at water level, head tilted back, eyes glassy, trying to pull in air in silence. In under a minute, they disappear.
At a Club camp, this can happen a few meters from you while everyone is playing in the river. Knowing what to do in the first minutes, before the ambulance arrives, is what separates a scare from a tragedy. This guide is about exactly those minutes.
Nothing here replaces a hands-on first aid course or medical care. It is information to help you recognize the danger, act with a clear head, and call for help fast. In Brazil, the emergency service answers at 192.
Drowning is silent, and that is why it fools people
In the movies, a drowning person shouts, kicks, and goes under with a lot of commotion. In real life the opposite happens. When air runs short, the body enters what lifeguards call the instinctive drowning response. The arms push the water to the sides in an attempt to rise, the mouth barely breaks the surface, and there is no breath or coordination left to wave or call for help.
The victim usually stays vertical, without kicking their legs, head low and gaze empty. They can struggle for twenty to sixty seconds at most before going under for good. Someone right beside them may swear the child is simply floating or fooling around, and that confusion costs lives every summer.
At camp, the script repeats: the kids from the Unit go for a swim in the river, the racket drowns out any noise, and a younger Pathfinder slips into a deep spot. No one hears anything because there is nothing to hear. Keep an eye on anyone who suddenly stopped playing, on heads that appear and disappear, on empty stares. A low head and silence near the water call for an immediate check. A good Club habit is to agree on the buddy rule and run through the list of names from time to time, as you see in water safety.
Before entering the water: reach, throw, row, go
The instinct to jump in and save is noble and, all too often, fatal. A person in panic grabs onto whoever comes close with frightening strength and pulls the rescuer under with them. Many good people have died trying to save someone who, in the end, survived. Remember the sequence that aquatic rescue services teach: reach, throw, row, and, only as a last resort, go.
Reach means extending something firm without leaving your safe spot: a long branch, an oar, a tent pole, a rope. Lie down or anchor your body so you are not pulled in. Throw comes next: toss anything that floats, a buoy, a life vest, a sealed plastic bottle, a foam block, an empty jug. The victim needs flotation before anything else.
Row means using a boat, kayak, or board, when one is available, to reach the victim without getting wet. Swimming out is the last option, reserved for someone who swims well, knows the spot, and takes a floating object out front so the victim grabs it instead of grabbing you. At camp, always keep ropes and buoys within reach near the swimming area. Improvising a rope from a branch in a moment of desperation rarely works.
Getting them out of the water without making it worse
Once the victim reaches the bank, get them out of the water as soon as possible, but carefully. Support the head and neck as you pull, keeping the body as horizontal as you can. If there was a headfirst dive into shallow water and you suspect a spinal injury, try to move the neck as little as possible, keeping head and trunk aligned. Even so, breathing comes first: an open airway saves more lives than an immobilized spine in someone who is not breathing.
Lay the person on their back on firm, dry ground, away from the edge. Hard ground is essential in case you need compressions later. Soft sand and sleeping mats get in the way. Gain those few meters of flat land before any more time-consuming assessment.
Do not waste time trying to empty the lungs. Turning the person upside down, pressing on the belly, or slapping the back to force water out is ineffective and dangerous: it delays the help that matters and causes vomiting, which can end up in the lungs. The water that needs to come out will come out on its own. Put all your energy into assessing and resuscitating.
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With the victim lying down, call out loudly and tap their shoulders. If they respond, cough, or move, keep them on their side, warm, and call for help anyway. If they do not respond, this is the moment to call your local emergency number (in Brazil, SAMU 192) or ask someone to call while you carry on. Calmly give the exact location, say it is a drowning, and whether the person is breathing or not.
To check breathing, tilt the head back slightly, lift the chin, and watch the chest for up to ten seconds. See whether it rises and falls, feel for air on your cheek, listen. Beware the agonal gasp, that rare, noisy gasping of someone in cardiac arrest: that is not breathing. When in doubt, treat it as not breathing.
While one rescuer assesses, another fetches the automated external defibrillator (AED), if the site has one. Many parks, schools, and gyms already have them. The device talks you through what to do and does not shock someone who does not need it, so using it is safe. But none of this holds up the line: if the victim is not breathing, resuscitation starts right away.
CPR for a drowning victim: start with air
Here is the difference that almost no one knows. In a common cardiac arrest, like that of an adult who suddenly collapses, the heart fails first and the guidance is to start with compressions. In drowning the logic is reversed: death comes from lack of oxygen, and the heart stops afterward, as a consequence. That is why, for a drowning victim, resuscitation opens with the airway and with breaths.
The basic life support protocol for drowning recommends five rescue breaths right at the start. Tilt the head back, pinch the victim's nose with your fingers, cover their mouth with yours, and blow slowly five times, watching the chest rise with each breath. Then continue with cycles of 30 compressions in the center of the chest to 2 breaths, at a fast rhythm of 100 to 120 per minute, pressing deep. If you cannot or do not want to give the breaths, at least give strong, continuous compressions. Compressions alone are infinitely better than nothing.
Do not stop on your own. Keep going until the victim breathes and moves, until the emergency team takes over, or until you can no longer manage and someone else takes your place. Swap with a partner every two minutes so you do not tire. If the step-by-step of compressions is still new to you, it is worth studying the CPR guide calmly and, even better, taking a hands-on course at the Club.
When the victim comes back: recovery position and the cold
If the person recovers their breathing but stays unconscious, place them in the recovery position: lying on their side, with the head supported and tilted slightly downward, so that water, saliva, or vomit drains out instead of going back into the lungs. Stay beside them, watching the chest rise and fall, because breathing can fail again and you need to be ready to start over.
Cold is a silent enemy at this moment. Water from a river, reservoir, or pool is usually well below body temperature, and a wet, still, frightened child cools down fast. Hypothermia leaves the skin pale, the lips bluish, the body shivering or, worse, strangely quiet. Take off the soaked clothes, wrap the victim in dry towels or blankets, shield them from the wind, and do not offer anything to drink until they are fully awake.
Curiously, the cold sometimes helps. In cases of very cold water, the cooling of the body can protect the brain for longer, and there are reports of recovery after long minutes underwater. That is why the rescuers' rule is to persist with resuscitation, especially with children in cold water. As long as help has not arrived, you do not give up.
The myth of dry drowning and secondary drowning
Every summer season the story goes around of a child who came out of the pool fine and died hours later in bed, from so-called dry or secondary drowning. The medical community is clear: those terms have been abandoned and describe something that, in the frightening way the legend tells it, does not happen. No one walks and talks normally and then dies drowned on the couch, with no sign at all.
What really exists is far less mysterious. Someone who swallowed and inhaled water can indeed have irritated lungs and develop problems in the following hours. The difference is that there are visible signs: a cough that will not go away, panting or difficult breathing, wheezing in the chest, foam at the mouth, excessive drowsiness, bluish lips. These symptoms appear soon after, they do not come out of nowhere in someone who was perfectly fine.
The practical rule for the Counselor and for parents is simple. Any Pathfinder who had a near-submersion episode, choked badly in the water and kept coughing, or came out of the swim listless and short of breath, deserves medical evaluation the same day. The idea is not to feed the panic of the legend. It is enough to watch for the real signs and go to a hospital if any of them appear. Calm vigilance solves the problem; uninformed fear only gets in the way.