Anchorage Daily News

Earlier this month, Jeff Johnson, who heads Alaska's boating safety office, won one of the most prestigious awards in his field.

The Bonner Award, named after the North Carolina congressman behind the federal boating safety act, has honored a mix of mostly congressmen and state boating safety czars over the years.

Johnson was proud -- and a little sad too.

Proud to win and to see some progress toward making boating safer in Alaska.

Sad that progress is so grudging.

"It brings credit to our program, but I don't know. We were the last state in the union to establish a boating safety program (in 2000, two years after former Gov. Tony Knowles made Johnson the state's first boating law administrator for the Alaska Office of Boating Safety.)

"We started from nothing and I think have come a long way in the last eight years. We've been able to be a leader in some areas, cold-water immersion especially."

But despite those efforts, the number of boating accident and fatalities in Alaska have changed little the last five years. In 2003, there were 48 accidents and 21 deaths, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. In 2007, the last year for which figures are available, there were 48 accidents and 17 deaths -- four more deaths than 2006 and exactly the same number of accidents.

And while deaths and accidents both have been flat recently, 38 Alaskans died in boating accidents as recently as 1998.

When a drumbeat of depressing statistics gets to Johnson, he sometimes thinks of the two Angoon children who might not be alive today if it were not for the Kids Don't Float program -- with a big assist from Jeffrey Young.

Kids Don't Float combines education with a life jacket loaner program at more than 465 sites statewide.

In July, the two boys were paddling a canoe in Chatham Strait, about 200 yards from the Angoon city dock. Young had noticed the kids playing after he'd returned from his job as a cook for the elderly at the Angoon senior center.

"I wasn't home five minutes before I heard kids screaming," Young said in a telephone interview. "I heard one of the boys saying, 'I can't swim.' "

He ran down to the beach. Everyone there was either a non-swimmer or intimidated by the cold water.

He dove in.

"It felt like my weight doubled," he said. "By the time I got out to the boys, they were scared and cold. They were really panicking. On a scale of 1 to 10, it was like a 15. They were really losing it.

"I was a lot more calm."

Within 10 minutes, with the help of a friend who jumped in at the end, Young was back on shore, receiving thanks and congratulations. Both boys were safe.

"One of them would have drowned most definitely" without the life-jackets, Young said. "They played an important part that day."

Stories like that make everything worthwhile for Johnson.

"I could take an awful lot of grief for one of those kids," he said.

In 1984, Johnson became the first park ranger assigned to Kachemak Bay State Park. He was an on-scene coordinator during the Exxon Valdez oil spill and later managed restoration projects.

He was named Alaska's first boating law administrator a decade ago and helped draft the state's first boating safety act.

In September of 2006, he was elected president of the National Association of Boating Law Administrators.

"When you look at the people who've won the Bonner Award," he said, "it's just amazing to be standing among them. And it's good for our state, too."

Now he's trying to get Alaskans to change their behavior and wear life jackets habitually, even though he realizes how hard it can be to change behaviors.

"It's a gradual thing -- social change takes a long, long time. But remember, 25 years ago if you'd told people that there wasn't going to be smoking in bars, I don't know how many people would have believed you," he said.

Johnson's agency keeps track of "saves" -- people who let his agency know that wearing a "Kids Don't Float" life vest averted a death or serious trouble.

There have been 16 this year, he said.

Still, "I would rather have mandatory life jackets in boats than education," he said.

No state has passed a law requiring mandatory life jackets, Johnson said, though some agencies within those states have.

"It would have to be the will of the Legislature, and there definitely are opponents," he said. "Initiatives like that are better coming from citizenry than the government."

So what kind of life jacket does Johnson wear?

"I like the auto-deployment inflatable. They sense immersion. They're not based on wetness, but pressure."

People who find themselves suddenly in frigid water often panic, making the automatic feature potentially life-saving, he said.

"Their minds just go away. They're surprised the water's so cold," he said.

"The last thing they're gonna think about is that they've got a little cord down there to pull."

Find Mike Campbell online at adn.com/contact/mcampbell or call 257-4329

FREE DVD

• A free 25-minute DVD, "Cold Water Boating," about cold-water immersion is available at the Department of Natural Resources Public Information Center, 550 W. Seventh Ave., Suite 1260 or in Fairbanks at 3700 Airport Way. Or e-mail the public information center at dnr.pic@alaska.govoffice to request one for a fee.

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