How to escape from a riptide

How to survive a rip current.

Riptides or Rip currents, are thin long streams of water that are strong enough to pull objects, animals and people away from shore and out to sea. If a person gets caught in one it can be very dangerous even fatal. They are dangerous but relatively easy to escape if you know how.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 
    

   6. DON'T PANIC.
   
   Sounds like a cliche' I know, but if you do panic you're as good as dead.

2. 
    

   1. Do not fight against the current.
   
   The majority of riptide deaths are caused by drowning, not the currents themselves. People caught in riptides will 9 out of 10 times not be able to make it back to shore because they are exhausted from struggling against the current.

3. 
    

   2.Do not swim in toward the shore.
   
   You will be fighting against the current. It will beat you every time.

4. 
    

   3. Swim parallel to the shore, across the current.
   
   Usually a riptide is less than 150 feet wide.so swimming beyond it is not too difficult.

5. 
    

   4. If you cannot outswim the pull of the tide lie on your back floating and let the riptide pull you away from shore until you are beyond the effective current.
   
   Riptides die out 150 to 300 feet from shore.

6. 
    

   5. Once you are no longer in the grip of the tide, swim sideways and then back to shore.

Tips & Warnings

• Riptides are a strange and random act of nature. They can occur any-time for no obvious reason. but as a general rule they occur more often in strong winds.
• Riptides can be under the surface therefore invisible to the naked eye, but telltale signs are strips of muddy or sandy water and bits of flotsam moving away from the shore through the surf zone.

[shannonny]

on 10/15/2008 Very good advice, especially here in Southern California! We have riptides all the time.