It’s very sad that three died. My own experience of the power of water was swimming across the mouth of river at South wold harbour while the tide was going out and the river in full flow.
Our kids were staying with my mum and dad one year in the school holidays. Our kids were aged about 6 and 8 at the time. Mum and dad had a bungalow near Hastings. They had them on a blow up dinghy in the sea at Camber sands and the wind and/or tide changed and about 50 people were washed out to sea and had to be rescued. Nobody died. Fortunately, being lazy, rather than go in with them, my dad had the dinghy tied to a washing line that he was holding onto and was able to haul our kids in when everyone else was going the other way. Someone else took the dinghy out and a few people climbed on or held on to it until the lifeguards collected them. We only found out about a week later when the kids came home and told us and we then got the full story from my parents!
I had a "moment" in the sea which left me with an inner fear of it, I still get dreams 40 odd years later. I was snorkelling away, looking at fish. With fins (flippers to you, Spline) you can go quite fast so I felt invulnerable. I got carried a bit and wound up on a different island than I'd started from.
On this map you can see it's deep water, which I didn't realise, so the current was fast. In the troughs I couldn't tell which way I was going. I went for the land I thought was closest.
I was absolutely strung out, and very grateful for a boat to take me back. I can still picture the boatman who said in broken English "hey meesta you lucky, most people go try that they die".