What a complete tragedy. My understanding of the scenario was that the kids (all teenagers I believe, not little tots) were wading in water no higher than their knees. This sounded no more dangerous than cooling off in a fountain in the town square. But apparently the bottom of that river is naturally unstable and at some point, I don't know if it was that day or some other time, a shift occurred and a sinkhole was created, causing the huge unexpected drop off. Combine the panic of that surprise with the powerful currents that occur in the deeper water of that river and the ingredients are there for the horrific chain reaction that followed.
I think it's presumptuous and downright cruel for anyone who wasn't there to discuss the inadequacies of the families' responses. I am sure that the moment they figured out what was going on, that most of them did not stand idly by or act stupified but did whatever they thought they could, no matter how useless hindsight tells us it was. (People act differently in crisis situations and some do freeze, some spazz, and some get down to business and later on admit that they had no idea where their ability came from.) Just because they did not know how to effectively respond did not mean that they were somehow inferior parents.
I spend a lot of time, as a whitewater kayaker, on Eastern Rivers and have participated in numerous swiftwater rescue courses. Although the geology of the rocky rivers I'm accustomed to is different from the sandy bottom of the Red River, the basic concepts of hydrology are the same: moving water can have surprisingly swift, powerful and sometimes unpredictable currents than can bring down even strong swimmers. IT CAN HAPPEN VERY QUICKLY. Except in rare cases or where water is very cold, few people survive sans brain damage much more than four minutes without air. Panicked non-swimmers burn more energy and choke on water, giving them even less time awaiting rescue before the clock starts ticking. Even people who are prepared to perform a rescue have precious little time.
The hazards are often unknown to novices, fooled by a seemingly calm surface. Every single year, people die in my area outside Washington DC on the Potomac River because they fall off rocks or wade into water that has stronger current than they expect or they go out without proper safety equipment (life jackets or clothing appropriate for the water temperature) or they don't understand the water features, such as hydrualics, they can expect to encounter. People even drown in drainage culverts after big storms because the principles of moving water are very similar. That is why flash flood alerts and warnings not to drive your car through flooded roadways are so important to heed, yet every year people think they can do it and they die.
These families did not exercise extra caution, ie concern themselves with the inability to swim, let alone how to rescue anyone because they just didn't know, and in "normal" situations they would have been fine. I have always loved the water and couldn't wait for my folks to get me swim lessons when I was a kid. But while it seems like a very basic life skill to many of us, there is a huge swath of folks out there for whom NOT swimming is the norm. In my old job, many of my co-workers couldn't swim and agreed that they knew they should learn but they were kinda scared and just not motivated or confident enough that as adults they could learn quickly and effectively enough.
