WASHINGTON — Maryland has seen four boating deaths this week alone and it has officials reminding the public about being safe on the water.
“No. 1 and I can’t stress this enough: wear a life jacket,” Candy Thomson, Maryland Natural Resources Police spokeswoman, told WTOP. “I don’t care if you are Michael Phelps. If you slip from a boat, if you hit your head, if you are incapacitated in any way, you’re not going to be in a position to help yourself.”
With the recovery of the body of a missing boater, Thursday morning near Baltimore, the death total on Maryland waterways is now up to 12.
“The one thing that sticks out last year and this year is the number of victims who were not wearing life jackets,” said Thomson. Every person who has died on a Maryland waterway this year was not wearing a life jacket, she added.
Last year, 18 of the 21 victims were not wearing a life jacket.
“I can’t tell you how many of the cases last year and this year, help was just minutes away,” Thomson said. “The shoreline was in view and the people were not wearing a life jacket so there is very little rescuers could do.”
Thomson says if the victims had been wearing their life jackets, first responders would have had more time to assist them.
One of the recent deaths involved 9-year-old Kaden JT Frederick of Howell, New Jersey. His family was renting a pontoon boat Wednesday in Ocean City to visit Assateague Island.
“They were on their way back to the rental facility when the young boy, who was riding on the bow of the boat with his legs dangling in the water, slipped and fell beneath the boat,” Thomson said of the incident. “The propeller struck him several times.”
EMTs weren’t far away and came to assist, but there wasn’t anything they could do, she said.
It may sound like an unusual accident, but the department says it has been oddly common this year. There have been about a half-dozen cases of people falling off a boat and getting hit by a propeller this year, she said.
Maryland typically sees about 13 boating deaths every year, Thompson said.
