Nevada Union wants students to be safe and stay out of the river, that’s the simple message for Water Safety Week. Today, Assistant Principal Luke Browning and School Resource Officer Paul McCallum partnered with California State Parks to raise awareness of the current dangerous river conditions.
They reminded students it takes less than 1/2 cup of water in a person’s lungs to drown. To know when it will be safe to be in the river later this summer, they recommended checking the Dreamflows reports where you can see real-time flows for any river in the state. At publication time, the Yuba River below Englebright was running at 13,631 cfs or 6,118 gallons per minute. (Imagine 37,353 basketballs coming at you in a minute.)
Besides the State Parks stickers and the safety message, quite a few students got to enjoy free popsicles.
Yesterday, students got to watch a video produced by NU during the river safety event at the 49 Bridge on the South Yuba. In it, students learned that the flows of 5,200 cubic feet per second (cfs) can fill over 3 Olympic-size swimming pools in under a minute. Or, put the Miners basketball court 20 ft under water in 16 seconds and the football field could be 10 ft under water in 30 seconds with this type of flow.
Water temperatures range between 40 and 50F and are projected to be lower over the holiday weekend. If you swim in cold water, you will loose your fine motor skills in under 5 minutes and can loose consciousness (and drown) in as little as 30 minutes, meaning first responders may not get to you in time. Don’t risk your life, that of your friends trying to pull you out or the lives of first responders, go to a lake – the water will still be cold, but calm.
Go Miners, just not to the river.