Water traps

VHO - In the hot summer, people seek out places with water to cool off and bathe. But unlike winter, the flood season with its abundant water, the dry summer brings tragic drowning incidents.

Summer has only just begun, yet there are already reports of children drowning. It turns out this sad refrain has repeated itself year after year, and it's unclear when it will ever end.

Illustrative image

I remember about a few decades ago, in Nghia Ha commune, Tu Nghia district (now An Phu commune, Quang Ngai province), there was a sudden outcry about dozens of children drowning. It turned out that during the summer, the children went to play in the lower reaches of the Tra Khuc River and met with tragedy. The Tra Khuc River has shallow and deep sections; it's usually shallow near the banks and only gets deeper towards the middle of the river.

But that's the natural terrain. There are many places very close to the shore that have deep pits, the result of sand mining, becoming seemingly harmless but very dangerous "water traps."

Along with other drowning incidents nationwide, this case has sounded an alarm about drowning prevention. Many measures have been proposed, such as teaching children to swim and erecting warning signs in areas at risk of drowning. But recently, on the Tra Khuc River, near the upstream section, three schoolchildren, all only ten or twelve years old, drowned.

This incident has nothing to do with the "man-made water pits" mentioned earlier, but it continues to serve as a warning for parents and the community to be mindful.

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Natural river gorges are created by nature, and there's no other way than to take precautions. What I'm referring to are man-made "water traps," created by humans.

VHO - In response to the recent series of serious drowning accidents involving children, the Ministry of Health has sent a document to the People's Committees of provinces and cities requesting them to strengthen measures to prevent injuries and drowning accidents among children during the summer and before the rainy season.

I strolled along the embankment of the Tra Khuc River near Thach Bich Bridge, passing through Quang Ngai town, and noticed warning signs about drowning posted on the bank. Below, the riverbed was dotted with bushes and flowing water. There were large, isolated circular holes, like wide ponds, surrounded by bushes, their bottoms filled with water. These weren't natural features; they were the result of sand excavation and bridge construction.

I saw some children parking their bicycles on the embankment, then gathering to play there, running around and doing all sorts of other things. I was a little startled: They surely hadn't missed the warning sign, but children are so playful, how could they remember? That's when I realized that warning signs are only a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. The sufficient condition is that the children's families must have measures to supervise them.

Another necessary condition, a precautionary but not superfluous one, is to avoid creating "artificial water traps." Construction and mining projects in any location always require "land restoration" upon completion. Specifically, "land restoration" is the process of returning the land to its natural state, a "battlefield cleanup" before the work is considered finished.

In this particular case, riverbed restoration should have involved leveling the riverbed, eliminating dangerous deep water holes. However, the builders and managers of the past probably focused only on the construction results or sand mining, "forgetting" that land restoration was necessary to complete the task.

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The result of these activities over the years has left behind in the Tra Khuc River (and surely in many other rivers) unsightly "earth mounds" scattered here and there in the middle of the river, interspersed with "water traps" and deep pits, which are both unsightly and pose numerous dangers.

It's time for managers to pay special attention to this issue, to prevent unnecessary social risks that are not inherent to nature. One of the important measures to prevent drowning is to avoid creating "water traps."

Source: https://baovanhoa.vn/doi-song/nhung-cai-bay-nuoc-235083.html