Posted: Tue, 23 Jun 2015 07:38 AM - 35,085 Readers
By: Katie Urbaszewski
A teenager who drowned in Lake Travis earlier this month had carbon monoxide in her system, which officials suspect was due to the girl unknowingly inhaling a boat’s exhaust fumes, Travis County medical examiner’s officials said Monday.
Sarah Pool, 15, was out on the lake on June 11 with a church wakeboarding camp, said Travis County sheriff’s spokesman Roger Wade. She was hanging onto a platform with two other girls on the back of a boat driven by an adult, he said.
The boat was moving forward while idling and, at one point, Pool went under the water and did not resurface, Wade said. Unlike the other two girls, Pool was not wearing a life jacket, Wade said.
A search team did not find Pool’s body until June 13.
Investigators have turned over their findings to the Travis County district attorney’s office, which is standard procedure for accidental deaths, Wade said.
Instructors of boat safety, such as Mitch Strobl of Boat-Ed.com, adamantly warn people not to hang onto the back of a boat while the engine is running. Whether swimmers are being pulled at full speed or simply lounging in the water while holding onto an idling boat, swimmers can be knocked unconscious before they even know they’re in danger.
“If the engine’s running, exhaust fumes are being created,” Strobl said. “Exhaust fumes equal carbon monoxide.”
There are lots of ways people can be safe behind a boat, such as wakeboarding or wake surfing, Strobl said. The boat’s engine should be shut off if a person is in the water and his or her face is close to the exhaust port, he said.
Carbon monoxide-related boating deaths aren’t common. In the past five years, carbon monoxide poisoning contributed to 16 deaths throughout the United States, according to Coast Guard data.
Austin-area chiropractor Larry Mann said he lost a friend in California to a carbon monoxide-related boat drowning. Mann, a wake surfer, had previously thought that warnings about carbon monoxide dangers were overblown.
People need to raise awareness for this issue, he said.
“Clearly, the education did not get out there,” Mann said.
Wearing a life jacket is also essential to boating safety, Strobl said.
“If there are two things I could put into every boater’s head, it’s wear a life jacket and don’t drink and boat,” he said. “If we taught every boater that, we would cut boating incidents substantially.”
Strobl’s company produces the boater safety education course that the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department endorses, and the course covers both life jacket safety and carbon monoxide dangers.
In incidents in which the cause of death is known, 84 percent of drowning victims involved in boating accidents last year were not wearing a life jacket, according to Coast Guard data.
In total, 82 percent of boating deaths in the country last year occurred on a boat operated by someone who had not received a nationally approved boating safety education certificate, Coast Guard data shows.
