Drowning deaths<\/strong><\/p>\nAfter five consecutive years of preventable drowning deaths staying at historically high levels, King County officials are urging the public to be cautious at rivers, lakes and Puget Sound as the Fourth of July weekend arrives.<\/p>\n
A preliminary analysis by Public Health – Seattle & King County indicates there were 30 preventable drowning deaths in King County in 2023. That annual estimate has been steady since 2019, when the number of preventable drownings nearly doubled from the previous year.<\/p>\n
Experts say the trend is the result of multiple factors: warmer air temperatures in spring and early summer when open water remains dangerously cold, a nationwide shortage of lifeguards, and inequitable access to pools and swimming lessons. They also noted that in the past five years, 70% of King County preventable drowning deaths involved drugs or alcohol.<\/p>\n
Public Health researchers categorized the geographic location of each drowning. About 40% percent occurred in Seattle, 30% occurred in North and East King County, and 30% occurred in South King County.<\/p>\n
Nearly 30% of the 74 preventable drowning deaths in open water over the past five years occurred in Lake Washington, while 11% occurred in Puget Sound. Two rivers — the Green River and the Snoqualmie River — accounted for 17% of preventable drownings.<\/p>\n
Public Health officials recommend that people wear a life jacket while on the water and to supervise children in the water.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In light of preventable drownings, King County officials are urging the public to be cautious at rivers, lakes and Puget Sound. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":69959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-69958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69958"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69958"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=69958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}