The most important piece of advice we can give you, is to learn how to swim. If you cannot swim, please contact your local swimming club in order to find out when and where you can learn how to swim. If you have children, teach them how to swim – preferably as early in life as possible. Many parents sign up their children for baby swimming. Babies have a natural reflex and intuition when it comes to swimming, and the fact that you cannot breathe underwater. Every child in Denmark is to learn how to swim. And if they do not learn it as babies, we recommend that swimming lessons take place no later than the 4th and 5th grade. It is important that parents are making sure that swimming lessons will be provided by the school.
Redningsmaterialer
On the beach, there are several types of rescue materials.
The rescue post, the red triangular rescue post with the Red Cross label at the top, is the only rescue post with full rescue equipment for rescuing from the open sea. The post includes the following:
- Two swimming vests (no life jackets) or two belts, both with grommets
- One lifebuoy with four meters of rope and a snap hook
- 220 meters of nylon lanyard with a snap hook on both ends.
- Life posts by lakes or fjords where ice can be formed during the winter are also provided with:
- Two ice spikes to be used in order to crawl on your belly across the ice.
How to use the materials in the triangular rescue post
When you need to rescue someone at the beach, please do the following:
- Preferably there should be two rescuers
- Both rescuers should wear a west / belt
- Both rescuers are to attach the 220 meters long nylon line to their west / belt. Now they have established a “lifeline”
- One of the rescuers is to swim out to the distressed, while the other one remain on the beach.
- The rescuer, who is to swim out, attaches himself to the lifebuoy with a rope to his vest / belt, and he can now swim with the lifebuoy in tow.
- When the rescuer comes out to the distressed, he hands the lifebuoy to the distressed, and then begins the rescue operation.
- Badedyr og luftmadrasser
The rescuer on the beach helps the other rescuer and the distressed by pulling them back to shore.
Water Toys and Air Mattresses
A summer day on the beach with the entire family ought to be fun and should be filled with lots of activities. Nevertheless, to bring water toys and / or air mattresses to the beach is not a good idea. It may very quickly become very dangerous. The soft items are very susceptible to wind and the current. Even the slightest wind will create a small current, and before anyone can react, the air mattress or the water toy come so far away from the shore that it is difficult and perhaps impossible to pull it back in. If the child is still attached to the water toy, one can now only hope that the waves do not topple the child of.
Both water toys and air mattresses ought to be prohibited on the beach.
When encountering strong winds, most people will probably choose not to use water toys, but it is a different story when the wind is weak and the offshore winds are without waves. Then you are more likely to give your child her water toys to play with, but the risk that the child will drift out to the sea is still large.
Perhaps, the current is slow and longitudinal to start with- whatever the weather conditions. Then, all of a sudden, the child gets driven away from the shore in an outward current.
Never bring beach toys and air mattresses to the beach.
Sand Holes
Sand holes are a common term for something that most people perceive as something very dangerous. And they can be. A sand hole can be seen as several things. Most people think of a sand hole as a hole one falls into, or are being pulled down in. Something most people have tried during their childhood when taking a swim at the beach. Others, on the other hand, experience a sand hole as a powerful current that they cannot swim against. Both explanations are correct. A sand hole or a rip current can result in both experiences. A sand hole is formed by strong onshore winds, directly or obliquely on the beach. The water is washed onto the beach, and must flow back into the sea. And depending on the ground conditions and the steepness at the beach, the excess water will erode a hole in the reef in order to get out again. This erosion of the beach may seem like a hole, and since the water flow in the hole is an outward flow, it will drag the person who has fallen into the hole with it. If the bottom of the beach is relatively flat, the outward water will replace the inward water, and the water, in a 10-20 meter width, is carried out. The people, swimming into the area, are taken with the current, and cannot swim against or swim through to the other side. The rescue in this situation is the same – regardless of how you get caught up in the current.
Stay calm, swim up to the surface and let the current take you out of the hole. The current’s strength will very quickly subside, and you can start to swim out to one of the sides of the current, and then swim towards the beach again.
If you panic and try to swim against the current, you will use a lot of energy and will quickly get tired, uneasy, and end up swallowing water, which, in both cases, can be dangerous.
Turn around on to the back, and let you lead with the current, just as described above.
Private Swimming Pools
There is nothing better than to dip in your own swimming pool, if you get tired of the sun. However, there is also another and a more dangerous side to a swimming pool. And that is the danger of falling. For adults it is certainly not a problem, but for small children, it can be fatal. A summer day at the pool with family or friends can be lovely, but one adult must be in charge of keeping an eye on the children. The younger the children, the closer the supervision ought to be. You can lose the sight of the children in a very short period of time.
To be on the safe side, make sure to place a fence around the pool so that small children or toddlers cannot crawl over to the pool and fall into it. The fence should not be less than half a meter.
Some choose to have a swimming pool cover pulled across the water surface to prevent leaves and the like from falling into the pool, and perhaps also to retain heat. Some covers do not fit very tightly, so when a person falls into the pool by accident, he or she can be wrapped completely into the cover in an attempt to get up. This can be fatal.
Holidays Abroad
When arriving at your destination, we recommend that you ask the tour guide or the locals if there are special circumstances at the beach that you should be aware of. In many places, the conditions will be very different from that of your local beach. There may be a rocky and steep beach bottom, gravel, stone and a very strong current.
The rules of using the pool area can also differ, and have more restrictions than in your own country.
Also ask if there is lifeguard supervision at the beach and by the pool.
Jellyfish and Weevers
Jellyfish
Jellyfish, which flow into the beach with its long, red and white tentacles….
Once you get stung by its long tentacles, which may be very long, you will experience a burning sensation.
You can relieve the pain by using a tool to scrape the nettle cells off your skin. It can be done with a knife or annother sharp object that you have at hand. Some have good experience using a credit card as a scraping instrument. The scraping has to be done in salt water. If you try to scrape it off with table water, you will experience it stings even more.
Weever
The weever is a fish with four poison spines on its dorsal fin and gills. The weever likes to lie half buried in the sand close to the shore in the summer. If you are unfortunate enough to step on it, you will immediately experience a sharp pain, and you will swell in the stitched area. The treatment is hot water. The toxin is labile, meaning that the heat neutralizes and destroys the toxin. Hold the stitched area in 45 degrees hot water for up to an hour. If you do not have a tetanus shot, then you should get one within 24 hours.