Woman Swept Over Niagara Falls-Not Found, other man located

[Isolder74]

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Woman Swept Over Niagara Falls Still Not Found; Searchers Find Man's Body Instead

Officials searching for the body of a Japanese woman who fell into the water at Niagara Falls discovered the body of an unidentified man instead.

The male, whose body was discovered in the whirlpool below the falls, was spotted by an Erie County Sheriff's department helicopter search crew, according to The New York Daily News.

The death is thought to be unrelated.

Niagara Parks Police in Ontario say two female students in their 20's from the Toronto area were visiting the falls around Sunday night when one of them climbed onto a railing near the river's edge and sat on a block pillar, with her legs straddling the railing, The Associated Press reports.

Dressed in a bright red hoodie and wearing big sunglasses, according to The Toronto Star, one of the women was talking and taking pictures when she climbed up on one of several rock posts, straddling the metal railing that ran between them. Below her, water rushed over the brink of Horseshoe Falls, falling 188 feet into the Lower Niagara River.

Police say the woman stood up and apparently lost her footing, falling into the river about 80 feet upstream from the brink of the falls. Officials say the river's swift current swept her over the falls.

Police say no foul play is suspected.

[Broomstick]

Railings exist near hazards for a reason!

[Flagg]

Railings exist near hazards for a reason!

To keep smart people and children safe?

[Skgoa]

...and thats why I neither do stupid stunts like that nor am impressed by them.

[Darth Wong]

There will always be people who don't take hazards seriously. Having seen a lot of small children at play, I've come to realize that this behaviour starts as soon as they learn to walk. It almost seems to be a genetic trait.

[Skgoa]

I like to call that the "would not have survived in the stone age" crowd. Seriously, I have met surprisingly many people in my still very short life (24 years), who simply cannot be entrusted with any mildly complex task. And not because they aren't intelligent. Some people seem to lack even the most basic wisdom/common sense.

[Tanasinn]

People in general seem to have very little appreciation of their mortality until they're in a situation where reversing the danger is difficult or impossible. Those who seem most insistent about safety are those who have witnessed or been involved in a situation where bad shit has happened where safety was ignored, in my experience.

[Broomstick]

I was going to say something about this partly being an effect of how safe in general the world has become. People can go about their lives oblivious to the dangers of wild animals and waterfalls and the like without incurring the same penalties our stone-age ancestors would have faced. Thus, where someone with extensive experience with hazards would look at the railings/fences around Niagara falls and not even think of climbing up on them others just don't see the danger and wind up missing.

Fall off some small things early in life and you'll know better than to goof around next to the edge of real cliff. Live in padded suburbia where you're insulated from all real danger and who knows if you'll even perceive the danger?

[ComradeClaus]

That's why the Darwin Awards exist right?

Seriously, I think it's odd that a John Doe is found around the same time? How many people get themselves killed at the fall seach year anyway? They need those railings as high as the bars at a zoo.

[Darth Wong]

People in general seem to have very little appreciation of their mortality until they're in a situation where reversing the danger is difficult or impossible. Those who seem most insistent about safety are those who have witnessed or been involved in a situation where bad shit has happened where safety was ignored, in my experience.

Apart from traffic crashes, I've never experienced such a tragedy, been involved in one, or even witnessed one. I've actually led a life remarkably free of contact with disaster (at least so far), yet I'm always the safety guy, making sure everyone has all necessary safety equipment on, taking note of escape routes, etc. What's more, I was always like this; it's not something I learned in engineering, although my education may have refined this instinct. I think I'm just cautious by nature.

[Broomstick]

Seriously, I think it's odd that a John Doe is found around the same time? How many people get themselves killed at the fall seach year anyway? They need those railings as high as the bars at a zoo.

It's not just the immediate tourist area around the falls - anything that falls into the river above the falls winds up going over sooner or later. The, ah, John Doe could have drowned upriver and just gradually wandered down to the falls along the current.

But yeah, there are a certain number of idiots who do dumb shit around there every year and wind up dead. Also the occasional suicide. Then there are the daredevils who try to ride the falls, with mixed success.

[weemadando]

People in general seem to have very little appreciation of their mortality until they're in a situation where reversing the danger is difficult or impossible. Those who seem most insistent about safety are those who have witnessed or been involved in a situation where bad shit has happened where safety was ignored, in my experience.

Apart from traffic crashes, I've never experienced such a tragedy, been involved in one, or even witnessed one. I've actually led a life remarkably free of contact with disaster (at least so far), yet I'm always the safety guy, making sure everyone has all necessary safety equipment on, taking note of escape routes, etc. What's more, I was always like this; it's not something I learned in engineering, although my education may have refined this instinct. I think I'm just cautious by nature.

I've spent enough time a) doing dumb shit that should have killed me as a teen and b) working with industrial processes which will flat out fucking wreck you if you disrespect them that I've got a healthy regard for safety. But some of the stories that friends who worked as industrial safety contractors tell are horrifying. Take this story...

There was a business that had a large industrial metal stamper/press which has the obvious hazard of being able to smash peoples arms into jam if they get inattentive.
So my friend went in and looked at it and went: "OK, we'll put in a guard rail here as a basic safety measure and add a safety switch so that you have to hold down this button and only then will the machine work."
So that happened and a month or two later he's back for a follow-up visit and finds that there's still issues because people have stuck down the safety switch. So he adds a second safety switch a step away from the machine so that someone has to have BOTH arms out of the press and holding down these two buttons before hitting a foot pedal to activate the press.
Another month or two passes and he has to come back again as they're still having reportable issues. So he looks and finds that again, both safety buttons have been stuck down. At this point he gives up on trying to find a solution for them and tells them to get rid of their staff/supervisors because it's them that are the problem.

[KhorneFlakes]

Stupid woman. Sometimes, this why I wish guardrails had motion-activated tasers built in, that would activate when it detected someone going over the rail.

Why is it that people can't understand their own mortality?

[Sky Captain]

Similar accidents happen at least few times a year here too on Baltic sea ferries where some passengers manage to fall over board despite that guard rails are at least 1,5 m high and there is no way you could fall over those by accident, well maybe if there is huge storm but then you shouldn't be wandering around on open deck.

[Losonti Tokash]

Poor girl. Can't imagine how her friend feels after watching that.

[ComradeClaus]

Stupid woman. Sometimes, this why I wish guardrails had motion-activated tasers built in, that would activate when it detected someone going over the rail.

Why is it that people can't understand their own mortality?

Umm, wouldn't that just make them drown faster? Like the following scenario: (misspelling intentional to convey DarWin Award Qualifications of the speakers)

Idiot #1: "Imma klumb thus here fence"
Idiot #2: "Is that a good idear Cletus ol chum?"
Cletus: "Here I goo"
*stradles fence, get's harpooned w/ 50K volts*

Cletus: "Yarrggghhhh!!!"
*Cletus twitches over the edge & since his paralyzed limbs mean he can't swim to shore, falls over the falls. Wins DarWIN Award & Taser Int. wins another contract.*

That's the scenario I pictured reading that.

You'd think after that Tsunami in Japan, that tourist would've been more mindful of the risks of drowning.

[tim31]

Not everyone reacts to extraordinary events like the way TSA reacted to 9/11.

People otherwise educated in safety can suffer spectacular lapses in judgement, as evidenced by the fate of a fire marshall in a 1977 GP

In any case I'm with Los; how horrifying for the unfortunate victim, how traumatic for the friend who will have a hard time forgetting the image.