Have to confess I've never really thought much about swimming pools but this stopped me short:
A 14-year-old schoolboy from the Isle of Man has died while on holiday in Thailand, after he was sucked into a swimming pool pumping system.
There are some U.S. stats which could be added to that:
Following are just a few facts uncovered by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in a comprehensive study of drowning and submersion incidents involving children under 5 years old in Arizona, California, and Florida.
* Seventy-five percent of the submersion victims studied by CPSC were between 1 and 3 years old; 65 percent of this group were boys. Toddlers, in particular, often do something unexpected because their capabilities change daily.
* At the time of the incidents, most victims were being supervised by one or both parents. Forty-six percent of the victims were last seen in the house; 23 percent were last seen in the yard or on the porch or patio; and 31 percent were in or around the pool before the accident. In all, 69 percent of the children were not expected to be at or in the pool, yet they were found in the water.
* Submersion incidents involving children usually happen in familiar surroundings. Sixty-five percent of the incidents happened in a pool owned by the child's family and 33 percent of the incidents happened in a pool owned by friends or relatives.
* Pool submersions involving children happen quickly. A child can drown in the time it takes to answer a phone. Seventy-seven percent of the victims had been missing from sight for 5 minutes or less.
* Survival depends on rescuing the child quickly and restarting the breathing process, even while the child is still in the water. Seconds count in preventing death or brain damage.
* Child drowning is a silent death. There's no splashing to alert anyone that the child is in trouble.
Drains, by definition, catering for a large volume of water, even in family pools, are a source of hazard. While we don't want to go down the draconian H&S route and over-regulate everything or ban it, there needs to be some sort of middle position found. Perhaps when schools take kids for weekly swimming lessons, the dangers of the pool itself, not just the standard safety lessons, can be given.
All the same - to be able to be sucked into a drain in a public pool says something about the owners and the builders, doesn't it? The last thing we want is to stop kids swimming and yet this sort of thing is just a little too prevalent for comfort.
People will always drown and kids are so willing to try anything that they see others do that it is surprising more don't die every year.
ReplyDeleteI think that H&S already has had it's impact on pools. We don't see any pools in the UK anyway with large drain holes. The small holes use to filter the water are what many have been caught in. The water is sucked out kids put their hands in to see what is there and get stuck. Usually a bit of panic and it's all over. Sometimes it's a bit ofpanic and then it's really all over.
Solution is to always supervise kids in the water. Problem is it's impossible to always supervise kids.
We need some robots to do this for us.
When I was a boy we swam in the river. It was tidal, too. But then we weren't toddlers.
ReplyDeleteTragic. Even in small fish ponds kids can drown.Except, for the really leggy,stubborn ones.
ReplyDeleteLord T - those robots again.
ReplyDeleteDearieme - I tried to imagine you as a toddler and failed.
Uber - leggy, stubborn fish? :)
Just imagine a toddler preparing for years of success at British Bulldog.
ReplyDeleteI was always paranoid about my children being in and near the water. Took some guff for it too from people. But, then these people didn't have to take care of 'near-drowning' children in the hospital (who were brain damaged).
ReplyDelete