NEW ways of warning people of the dangers of swimming in West Yorkshire’s canals, reservoirs and waterways are being developed after a number of deaths in recent weeks.

Members of West Yorkshire Fire Authority heard that many of those who get into trouble when swimming are strong swimmers who “think they can handle it".

But underwater currents and cold water have left even strong swimmers fighting for their lives.

Since the arrival of warmer weather there have been several deaths in West Yorkshire’s rivers, canals and reservoirs – despite high profile safety campaigns by West Yorkshire Fire Service and other public bodies.

The issue was discussed at a meeting of West Yorkshire Fire Authority’s Community Safety Committee on Friday.

Members were told the service was now looking at more out-of-the-box methods to let people know the dangers of water.

One such method was using a tank of water to show people how cold bodies of water can get.

Scott Donegan, area manager for prevention and response, said: “We’re trying to do something different. We’re trying to expose people to what water shock really feels like.

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“The work we were doing before wasn’t working as well as we’d like, it wasn’t going far enough.

“We push people into a cold water tank so they can feel that shock for themselves. We then give them the advice that would allow them to survive.”

He said such sessions were closely supervised to prevent people getting into real difficulties.

Wakefield Councillor Charlie Keith (Lab) said: “People say it’s the loss of swimming lessons that has caused this, but we’ve seen more swimmers involved in these incidents than we have non swimmers.”

Mr Donegan agreed, saying: “It is not necessarily non-swimmers that are getting to trouble, it is the strong swimmers who get in the water and think they can handle it.”

Members were told that another way of getting the message across was a new weir model the service was using to show the dangers of seemingly calm water.

A model of a mini working weir was built to show, with the aid of Lego or Playmobile figures, the difference between a standard flowing river and bodies of water such as canals, and the dangers of the circulation of the water in a weir that are hidden from view normally.

Mr Donegan said: “Unfortunately we are still seeing people die on a regular basis, and this is one of the ways we’re trying to move from traditional approaches to getting the message out.”