To educate the community on safety regulations, Tootell Aquatic Center organizes Water and Ice safety day. PHOTO CREDIT: Campus Recreation
The University of Rhode Island held its annual ice safety day in Tootell Aquatic Center, where they teach kids and parents about being safe around ice during the winter months.
According to aquatics specialist Cindy Prenguber, it was a day where families could come free of charge and learn techniques to learn what to do if they were to fall in the ice in full winter attire.
Prenguber said that in Rhode Island, it is not uncommon to hear about kids falling into ice during the winter. She said this is largely due to the rapid change in temperature that happens during the winters in the state.
According to Prenguber, this event was designed to be engaging and fun for families by implementing games into the program. One game that the children played at the event was meant to teach them about hypothermia. They reached into a bucket of ice water to grab pennies and were then asked to try to spell out their names with the coins in order to demonstrate the effects hypothermia has on the body.
Other games include things such as falling out of canoes into the pool water to teach children what to do in that situation.
Prenguber said the best piece of advice that she can give is to simply avoid the ice during the winter.
“Mostly we’re trying to teach them not to go to the water, don’t go near it in the winter, and if you happen to fall into an ice hole, how to climb out of the water, and how to stay warm once you’re wet,” Prenguber said.
To achieve the feeling of being wet, they made a hut out of mats that were wet with a fan blowing on it so they knew what it felt like to come out of a freezing lake.
According to Prengruber, bystanders should not go into the water to help people get out.
“What happens, especially in a place like Rhode Island where the temperatures rise and fall so much in the winter, the ice might look safe enough and thick enough, but generally it’s not,” Prenguber said.
There were also educational tools for the parents, such as worksheets and pamphlets that explained what to do in the situations discussed during the event.
Students from URI helped run the event by registering attendees and working as lifeguards. According to Prenguber, this was an opportunity for the students to interact with the larger community.
“It creates a bond between us and the community, as they get to come in, it’s a free event, they get to swim, it’s helpful in both ways,” Prenguber said.
Aleigha Williams, a junior biological science major, helped register people at the event and said that both the children and the lifeguards had a good time.
“I love working with kids, I have been working with them since I was in high school,” she said.
According to Williams, events like these help the relationship between students at URI and the community as it helps them communicate in a more professional way.
Prenguber said that the importance is critical as every kid needs to know about these things, and this is one of the best ways to do that.
“So it is not only fun and silly, but they are also thinking ‘how do I get out?’ so it’s a learned lesson by doing it,” Prenguber said.
Tootell will be hosting a water safety event during this spring where they will teach similar drills about water safety.