Incident in Solihull

[YoSofi]

Comments on news reports are saying that five children/young teens have gone through ice into a lake and are in a critical condition.

Really hope that all involved make a full recovery

This is heartbreaking, the poor children & their families. The excitement & joy winter weather brings to all children. It's a terrible tragedy, their poor families, classmates & neighbours, hope they will be given the support they will need.

@allflownthenest those incidents were shocking too. I can well believe when multiple incidents or tragedies which have a large number of casualties occur, the community is affected for a very long time.

Exactly, lying down is the way to move on thin ice as it evens out the weight. I grew up in Sweden and spent a lot of time on frozen lakes in the winters ice skating, fishing and even making fires and grilling hot dogs but the ice would be at least a meter thick. Lovely times.

We also had rescue classes on the ice throughout school, where we got to watch people being rescued from the water, and we got to practice pulling ourselves along the ice with ice picks (not sure what they are called in English but I think you use something similar when climbing mountains to get a grip using your hands). We also had to go to the swimming pools fully dressed in our coats, gloves etc to experience how heavy we are with all our clothes on, and we had to practice rescuing each other. Very useful to know.

I hope the boys make it and that this will prompt schools and parents to teach more about this and rescuing in general wether that is ice, water or fire.

Our outdoor classes looked like this:

The fact that adults drive cars into flood water thinking they'll get out the other side shows that even adults don't always have their common sense switched on.

I think it's colder this year than it has been the last couple of years, just thinking of when I've had to scrape the car windscreen, so I can see that ice wouldn't have formed in this sort of quantity in recent years and therefore have been more tempting.

I'll be stressing the need to stay off ice to both my kids tonight. I'd presumed that they know not to go on, but I need to check after this. No going to retrieve balls or as a dare etc.

How can one measure how thick the ice is though?

In UK, don't bother - it's never going to be thick enough

Absolutely heartbreaking. But on my social media, fingers are already pointing at schools - ‘schools should be educating children on this kind of thing’. Nope. The education of dangers out there should sit firmly with the parents. Schools can reinforce the message, but the main responsibility remains with the parents. Really hope these poor children in hospital pull through……

I expect the emergency services have known for some time - quite possibly with help from footage from phone cameras (as that's generally more reliable than eye-witnesses).

The police (according to Beeb) will be holding a further press conference this morning.

They said last night that members of the public as well as emergency services had entered the water to try to rescue children. They do not say how many may still be unaccounted for, nor whether they are missing children or adult rescuers

If the latter, then it might be less straightforward to contact NOK as the person might not have been reported missing as early as a child would be.

One police officer has required treatment for hypothermia

That's a reasonable point, but many parents are ignorant, or just don't think about it. The onus and blame shouldn't be on schools, but it would be a good idea for them to inform the children. I'm sure that a lot of assemblies will be mentioning this incident today.

I live in Norway where people drive onto lakes and even use them as roads in the winter. You test the thickness of the ice with a drill before going on, often with an ice-fishing drill. People skate, ski and fish on the lakes near me. If you grow up here, you are well aware of the dangers of going out on the ice and you take safety seriously. But even so, accidents do sometimes happen. A couple of days ago two men died in Norway when the snowscooters they were on went through the ice. Both of them were very experienced in the local conditions. I would never walk on ice in the UK. I would be very skeptical to the cold snaps in the UK being enough to freeze the water sufficiently.

I think kids in cities don't have the same awareness of danger. We were always being told as kids growing up rurally not to play on ice, horror stories of people falling into frozen rivers and being sucked along under the ice, falling into slurry tanks, no gruesome detail spared.

We now live in a city and my kids can't imagine anything horrible ever happening in the pond in our local park. It feels really safe. But it actually gets deep quire quickly and the ice is never thick enough to walk on, even if it looks like it is.

I hope I've told my kids often enough not to play on frozen ponds but have they actually listened and taken it in? Or would they walk on the ice at the very edge because it feels safe, then creep a bit further and further out because they're kids and they think they're invincible? Or they've lost track of how far out they actually are? Or their ball has rolled just out of reach so they take an extra step? Would they actually run away and find a phone and leave their friend in the freezing water or would they jump in to help?

You just never know until you're in that moment.

I'm praying for everyone involved in this dreadful accident.

They also have people there who check when the ice is safe and put up notices

I think it's important to empower our son's - and it's typically boys - to stand up to their friends when they are being idiots around water. So many summers we hear of adolescent boys and young men drowning because they get a wave of male bravado and throw themselves into a body of water. I would not be at all surprised if this group were also boys.

It's so painfully sad for the individuals, their friends and their families but we must bring back water safety education into schools.

It’s definitely primary school children. The school they attend is shut today. Heartbreaking.

I agree that the responsibility to educate lies mainly with parents, but I do think schools should reinforce the message.

There isn’t a day that goes by where I’m not warning my children about something - to watch the road, don’t talk to strangers, stay away from the park when it’s dark etc etc etc.

I do worry that they don’t take heed and it just becomes noise because they hear so many warnings and think I’m just over protective . I think actually seeing those videos in school may help, I’m in my 40s and still remember how much they scared me.

My DC’s swimming school give over a week of
lessons every half term to water safety. I think they use RLSS materials. The lessons are seasonal, eg beach safety, riptides etc in summer, frozen water, canals etc in winter, and the children do their lessons in clothing.

If your children attend swimming lessons and the swim school don’t already do this I’d highly recommend suggesting it to them.

It's heartbreaking that kids can't get swimming lessons these days.. We live rurally, nearest public pool is 40.miles away so the school don't do lessons. The water safety module is done by theory in the classroom. My dc do 30 min lessons a week, 100 pounds for 8 group lessons. Group sizes of 8 per lesson. The waiting list is huge so we're lucky to get this (private gym). The number of kids who missed out on lessons both privately & through school is frightening. Apologies for going off topic. Thoughts & prayers for the poor kids, families, classmates & community.

User57713 · Today 09:50

I think kids in cities don't have the same awareness of danger.

I think that's true in a lot of situations. We live 100 yards from the beach, I didn't grow up right on the coast, but we were often there, as kids. I was 15, when two girls went on the prom and were knocked over by huge waves, with one being sucked through the fence and drowning.

When we moved here, we were out with DD in the pram and the waves were crashing over and my wife, seeing lots of people, suggested that we should go down and take photos. I said no and explained why and more or less immediately, a group were knocked over.

Even people who really, really should know better end up in the water. A few years ago, two idiotic fishermen climbed over the locked gate and went onto the pier, in Tynemouth. One was rescued, the other was never found.

The schools cannot parent your children to cover every eventuality. Two of our local swimming pools are closing between Christmas and New Year which is exactly the time that the kids could do with going for a swim for exercise. Get them away from the PlayStation. Fun time in a safe environment with their friends but the council can’t afford to staff it and heat it.

That particular location, the nearest swimming pool is a 15 minute ride on the bus which will cost you a pound each way.

then you’ve got to pay for your swim.
There simply isn’t enough safe things for these children to do in this demographic communities.
They keep reporting it as being Solihull KingsHurst is 1,000,000 miles away from being Solihull, an affluent suburb.

I think kids in cities don't have the same awareness of danger

i disagree. I live in a major city and have many bodies of water nearby including a river and numerous ponds and lakes. We are close to the coast too.

Water safety has been completely dropped off the school curriculum, road safety is barely there these days too. It's one thing us parents drilling our kids but it needs reinforcing, as does how to resist peer pressure and a support network to do so.
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Agree with this. I’m sure there must be a spike in deaths by drowning when boys hit pre-teen/teen years as so often we hear of incidents particularly in heatwaves. It is so incredibly sad because they are generally just out having fun and get into trouble through misadventure. But we owe it to young people to inform them of the risks.

Those poor kids and their families.

Two adults have just been shown on a news report video on Twitter leaving flowers at the scene 😞

It’s so incredibly sad. I live not too far away and have family who are very close and it’s safe to say the whole community and wider area are feeling a strange way this morning. It’s all I’ve thought about all night.

I have 3 boys and it scares the life out of me to think about when they’re old enough to go out on their own. As a PP said, boys especially find it so hard to stand up to their friends when they suggest doing something unsafe like this. We can drill it into them as much as we like, both parents and schools, but ultimately they make the decision in the moment.

It’s so heartbreaking, they were just curious kids who made a bad decision and now they may lose their lives because of it.

The search seems to be still ongoing, which suggests there’s definitely people still unaccounted for. The local primary school has closed today, so I assume that’s where the children attended which means they must be quite young. Utterly horrendous situation and my thoughts are with everyone involved.

I live locally, there is a huge police presence down at the lake, and floodlights overnight.

if all children were accounted for then everyone would’ve been stood down. West Midlands Police are holding a press conference this morning.

this is a recovery operation. I went in to my sleeping children last night and I cannot even begin to imagine the pain those families must be feeling. The fact two children were taken to Birmingham Children’s Hospital as opposed to Heartlands which is 5 mins away says a lot

@MabelMoo23 it actually doesn't wan anything. BCH would not be able to deal with 4 children in cardiac arrest at once. So the sensible thing is to spilt them up
With another major hospital.

It's so awful, those poor families. My heart goes out to all involved.