A killer moves through the water. Silent. Invisible. It can pull you under in an instant, without any means of escape. No, it’s not a shark: it’s electricity.
Meredith Defoe knows exactly what it’s like to encounter this danger. On May 11, 2020, she was severely shocked by stray voltage that was leaking off her neighbor’s dock on Lewis Smith Lake, in Alabama. When Meredith first stepped off her dock and into the water, she felt her legs start to burn.
“Our dock doesn't have electricity, so I didn’t initially think that I was being shocked. Then it started burning and I thought it might have been a snake, and then it just got worse and worse and worse,” said Defoe in a video about the experience. (View the video below.)
Electricity in the water is invisible to the naked eye. Without a gauge or an alert system, it’s impossible to know if the water around your dock is electrified, until it’s too late.
“Electricity can’t be seen. It can’t be heard,” said Dave Hotz, the inventor of Dock Lifeguard, a popular electricity-detecting device that got its start at Lake of the Ozarks. “What I tell people is that before Dock Lifeguard was invented, it was a leap of faith every time you jumped in the water.”
Learn more about Dock Lifeguard at DockLifeguard.com.
And at first, Meredith didn’t know it was electricity in the water that was dragging her down.
“It paralyzed me from my feet all the way up,” she recalled. She struggled to swim to a nearby cable and grabbed on. “I grabbed the cable, and it shocked me even worse. I couldn’t let go.”
Defoe had made it close enough to the shore that her husband could extend a pole for her to hang onto, and he pulled her back onto the shore.
“It was paralyzing and burning, but I knew everything that was going on. It was horrifying and I don’t want anyone to ever go through that ever,” she said.
Had her husband not been there with the pole, Meredith likely would have died, but through good luck and quick thinking she survived. Shortly after this incident, she installed Dock Lifeguard on her dock after her uncle, an electrician, recommended it.
“If I had come down and seen this product [Dock Lifeguard] going off, I would have never have jumped into the water,” she said.
Dock Lifeguard detects electricity on the dock frame and anywhere in the water within about 40 feet of the dock. When hazardous electricity is detected, the device sounds an alarm, flashes a bright strobe and alerts dock-owners to this invisible killer.
Even if a dock owner is certain their dock is wired correctly, the water around a dock can be carrying lethal amounts of electricity from a source hundreds of yards away. Dock Lifeguard’s premium unit’s display also shows the amount of electricity in the water that it detects. This matters, since electricity could be coming from multiple sources — neighboring docks or passing boats — compounding to create a lethal situation.
Poorly done and dangerous dock wiring on an Arkansas lake.
In the video, Meredith points at the Dock Lifeguard installed on her dock, saying, “This right here will save lives. What happened made me go back to thinking of people who have already died on this lake. They knew what was happening until their last breath, and that’s horrifying.”
Order a Dock Lifeguard here: www.docklifeguard.com/purchasehere.html
Read more shocking stories here: www.docklifeguard.com/stories.html
See Meredith Defoe's story:
Personal story of an ELECTRIC SHOCK DROWNING (ESD) Victim who survived a near fatal ESD Drowning at Lewis Smith Lake. This moving video is the account of a young woman who was severely shocked near her boat dock just 11 days ago here at Lewis Smith Lake. Even though she does not have power OR any electricity installed on her dock.....she was still severely shocked from stray voltage from her neighbors dock.
*Past LakeExpo Coverage Of Dock Electrocutions*
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — A wiring problem could have killed several people who were swimmin…
A bare wire, dangling in the water from a neighbor's dock, could have been fatal for swimmer…
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — Investigators say a breaker that kept tripping was a sign of wirin…
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — A 21-year-old man was killed on Sunday night when, according to au…
LAKE OF THE OZARKS, Mo. — It could have been fatal.
