To think this charity deserve prosecution for being so bloody stupid?

[Fucklechuck]

Just seen this in the news and went down a rabbit hole reading the whole story plus comments on their FB.

They took a bunch of young kids on a frozen lake (apparently without parental consent) and tried to justify it as a safety lesson despite clearly having no understanding themselves of the actual dangers. For example they're claiming the entire lake was frozen over with 2ft thick ice - no, it definitely wasn't, not in the south west of the UK, it's just not that cold in this country even in the recent cold snap. That's just impossible.

Their comments on their FB page are shockingly blasé and they've even been liking other people's comments saying that vaccines are a bigger danger to children than this was

Just can't believe anyone would be so stupid less than a week after the tragedy in Solihull and then to take to social media calling it a knee jerk overreaction to suspend their license until an investigation is complete shows a total lack of regard for the most basic H&S or risk assessment processes. I actually hope their registration to look after children is revoked by whoever has such powers!

Babbs Mill was no deeper and a 10 year old (among others) died. And there wasn't two feet of ice anywhere in England. Water doesn't need to be chest deep to drown, you're a lot shorter when you fall over.

Imagine paying for a VPN just so that you could post drivel on social media...

FMD. MN used to be a place where you could have an intelligent debate. Long gone are those days.

some of you should not be allowed to go outside by yourselves, let alone anything else.

if some absolute fuckwit took my child onto ice like that, I wouldn't rest until they faced never seeing daylight again

Looking at the statement, I can never take seriously any individual or organisation who is fond of writing random words in BLOCK CAPITALS. It reminds me of conspiracy theorist/FMOTL types.

Stupid move I would be angry too

some of you should not be allowed to go outside by yourselves, let alone anything else.

@JugglingJanuary if only they did spend more time outdoors, and less time on their smartphones.

Ice, water and mud are all slippery, which means you absolutely could end up chest deep.

I shudder to think what my Northern Canadian friends would think of this thread. They'd be in shorts at minus 10, complaining about the heat. Not out on frozen lakes!

People need to go to jail over this. Reckless endangerment of children's lives.

I have little to no respect for the charity sector in this country. From experience most of the people working in it are either idiots or grifters.

But everything is dangerous.

There's ever so slightly dangerous and there's risk-of-falling-into temperatures- that-will-quickly-kill dangerous.

The charity’s statement shows their extremely worrying lack of knowledge- they state one of their staff having spent 8 winters in cold countries makes them an expert.

Although some people on this thread doubt it- it is impossible for the ice to be as thick as the staff believed it to be. This shows their lack of knowledge of the meteorological conditions for ice formation.

The fact that they believe a child who fell in icy water could get up and walk back to a cabin is just astounding and shows their profound lack of training, knowledge or experience. Drowning and hypothermia are risks, but the most important and likely to kill risk is cold water shock. It could take a matter of minutes to be dead.

People die of cold water shock in reservoirs and canals in the summer- imagine plunging into freezing icy water with the physiology of an 11 year old. That child would need air ambulance to hospital even if they didn’t drown or hit their head or go into sudden cardiac arrest.

The charity has gone way way beyond their remit.

Incidentally I say this as someone who has seen the grisly side of outdoor ice sports. Whilst no, no one should be wrapped up in cotton wool all the time, there are calculated risks.
I’ve seen a woman who hacked herself to bits with her ice pick as she tumbled through an avalanche having ignored the weather warnings. Warnings and risk management are there for a reason. People who live in countries like Norway and Canada tend to respect these risks whilst enjoying the outdoors.

This ^

Most people on the Titanic survived the sinking, but once they were in the water they died of cold in about 10 mins.

Cold water drops your heart rate quickly amongst other things.

I fell into powdery snow not because no one ever taught me to walk on snow, where I live I have traipsed through plenty. I had on appropriate footwear, I was not excited or distracted but I slipped and ended up in the flaming snow!

if my kid had been taken out on that lake I would be livid. And questioning whether the adults in that group could ever be trusted to make good decisions.

Some absolute moon howlers on that Facebook post 😕 absolutely fucking mental.

I have just checked the weather records and it never got bellow - 7 in the week before night time and daytime temps were actually above freezing at the nearest weather station for 3 days and shockingly are reported at plus 3 daytime in Gloustershire on the day they went on the ice. They need to stop doubling down and start learning lessons. They are instigating a campaign against the forestry body and have stated now on fb the lake is 2 to 3 feet deep. They are in victim mode but need to stop making things up to minimise what they did and get some proper advice on dealing with this. They've fecked up and need to own it big time.

I used to live in the area and I can tell you Babbs Mill is defo not 2-3ft deep. I've just googled it and can't find an official depth but most fishing comments say 4ft on average.

People do return repeatedly though tbf. All they need to do is download a free vpn on their phone to route it through another IP address.

The issue in the ice would have been worse than a kid falling through. They kept the group together, so the weight wasn't diffused. And there was at least one adult (don't know if they went as one group ir split into smaller ones with an adult). Point is the ADULT would likely have gone through first. And then quite possibly and kid nearby OR who ran towards the adult to help. As the adult tries to get out of the ice, they're likely to have broken more of it too, spreading cracks. I could go on, but you get the picture.

There are plenty of videos online of people falling through the ice in ponds and surviving but they're not leading groups of kids.

I'd love to see these group leaders speaking with a Norwegian about how you walk out on ice to test it for it's strength! 😂

Google resources on ice thickness from places such as Canada, and states like Alaska and Minnesota, where frozen winters are the norm. They all say to keep off ice that is less than 2" (5cm) thick.

Where in England does any body of water freeze to even 2" thick? In the UK it is common sense to have a blanket Keep Off Ice rule with regard to anything bigger than a puddle or deeper than your calves. Especially when so much about what is under the ice is unknown, and a person's ability to cope with the shock of falling into freezing cold water is untested.

the Rewild Project is not a charity, it's a Social Enterprise
www.therewildproject.com/

Woke up to a load of notifications but I see I missed the overnight troll 🙄

Re them being a social enterprise not a charity - I was just going on what I'd seen describing them as a charity. I don't really know much about how organisations like this are structured! I still think whoever okayed it should face some sort of legal action though. The fact that they keep insisting the ice was 2ft thick makes them look like dangerous fools - the ice was absolutely not that thick, that's impossible in the UK on a lake of that size, they have no way to demonstrate or check that assertion, and it doesn't look good for their general ability to accurately assess risks and understand basic science and safety. I'm really surprised they haven't taken legal advice (which clearly they haven't, as if they had the very first advice they got would have been to stop spouting crap on social media about it!)