As crowds head to lakes, rivers and pools for Labor Day weekend, water safety advocates are urging people not to let higher water levels and warm weather create a false sense of security.<\/p>\n
The warning comes after the body of 40-year-old Robert Allen Chapman was found in Canyon Lake on Sunday morning.<\/p>\n
Alissa Magrum, with the Texas Water Safety Coalition and the National Drowning Prevention Alliance, said holiday weekends often bring a surge of people to the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely don’t like heading into these holiday weekends because we know that we see, you know, an increase of people getting out and about, whether it’s at pool parties or at the lakes or the beaches,\u201d Magrum said.<\/p>\n
Magrum said her mission is personal after her daughter\u2019s classmate drowned in a community pool. She also pointed to statewide data, saying Texas has one of the highest drowning rates in the country, with 65 child drowning deaths this year alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one is drown proof. Not me. I’m a I’m a competitive triathlete. I’m a strong swimmer. But I can get into trouble. And I think people often think I can swim. My kid is at swim lessons, you know, but water is inherently dangerous,\u201d Magrum said.<\/p>\n
Magrum said drowning can happen in any depth. She encouraged people who plan to go out on the water to choose areas with lifeguards when possible and to always wear a life jacket.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople think this is someone else’s message. I’m a good parent. I’m a good swimmer…after working with almost 100 families in the last almost 20 years, none of those families thought that they would lose a loved one to a drowning or a water related tragedy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Even for confident swimmers, Magrum said taking a few extra seconds for precautions can make the difference between a fun outing and a tragedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As crowds head to lakes, rivers and pools for Labor Day weekend, water safety advocates are urging people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-425643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}