Pool Safety
Home pools are becoming more common every day. They provide an excellent means of recreation for your entire family and friends for a large part of the year. You must be aware of the potentially hazardous properties of a pool. The outcome of a toddler falling into an unmonitored pool can be devastating.

Just how serious is the problem? In modernized countries of the world the problem is massive. Drowning is the number one cause of death for children under five in the American states of Florida, Arizona, and California with a ranking of number two for the rest of the U.S.A..In Australia and New Zealand it is also the number one cause of death. As for Europe it is the second most common cause of death. For every drowning there are eleven near drowning incidents, many of which result in totally disabling brain damage.
The majority of the parents involved were responsible people who thought it could never happen to their family. They were careful and had close supervision over their children. Many were in good income brackets, educated, and could afford nice homes with pools in family oriented communities. If drowning were a disease it truly would be referred to as an epidemic with all the public attention and awareness possible focused on an epidemic of such proportion.

STUDY CONDUCTED BY U.S. PROCUCT SAFETY COMMISION

The investigation by the Commission was directed at children under age five in Arizona, California, and Florida who had drowned at home in swimming pools. The results might help you to better understand why drowning is still the number one killer for children under five for three states and stands at number two for the nation:

Who was in charge of supervision at the time of drowning?

• 69 percent of the accidents occurred while one or both parents were responsible for supervision.
• 10 percent were adults other than the parents.
• 14 percent were sitters.
• 7 percent siblings

What was the location of the pool drowning?

• 65 percent were in a pool owned by the child's family.
• 22 percent at a relatives
• 11 percent happened at a neighbour's.

Where were they last seen?

• 46 percent where last seen in the house prior to being found in the pool. Of these, 15 percent were thought to be sleeping.
• 23 percent were last seen in the yard, porch or patio, not in the pool area. That's a total of 69 percent that were thought not to be in the pool area.
• 31 percent were last seen in the pool or pool area.


What activity was the person responsible for supervision involved in at the time of drowning?

• 39 percent were doing chores.
• 18 percent socializing.
• 9 percent were busy on the telephone.
The suddenness of this type of accident and the results it yields is devastating to anyone it touches.

There is no cry for help. 77 percent of the children had been seen 5 minutes or less before being missed and subsequently discovered in the pool. Drowning happens quickly.

It is estimated that for every ten children who drown, 36 are admitted to hospitals and 140 are treated in emergency rooms. Toddlers are often at high risk for drowning due to their curiosity, rapidly changing skills and their inability to understand danger. Even with close supervision, it takes only a few seconds for a child to slip out of the house and into the pool, and they can lose consciousness after approximately two minutes under water. Irreversible brain damage occurs after, at most, four to six minutes and survival, especially survival without impairment, is unusual after immersions of longer than five minutes.

Zero tolerance should be the goal when it comes to toddler drownings.


What's working?
Experts in injury prevention credit the decline in toddler drowning deaths to both the advent of formal requirements for pool fencing and public water-safe information campaigns. Numerous studies both here and overseas confirm that fencing pools saves lives.

One showed that four-sided fencing (which completely isolates the pool from the house) and three-sided perimeter fencing (which still allows access to the pool from the house) both significantly lower the risk of drowning compared to unfenced pools. However, another early study, conducted in Australia in 1988, showed four-sided fencing to be significantly safer than three-sided.A building wall can form part of a four-sided fence as long as there are no doors, and windows are secure.

Basic pool safety tips

Learn CPR and learn to swim.
Always supervise children.
Maintain lifesaving equipment such as ring buoys near the pool for emergency use only.
Remove toys from pools after use so children are not attracted to them.
If you cannot find a child, begin your search at the pool.

As we said,In most industrialized countries, drowning is one of the top killers of children, especially young children. Medical care offers little to help drowning victims, and thus survival must rely on prevention of the drowning

Most injuries are preventable. People tend to blame their injuries on "accidents." However, when you examine the causes of most accidents, you’ll find that the accidents are actually the result of predictable and preventable occurrences. Suppose you know you’re driving with bald tires. If one of them blows out, causing you to lose control of the car and crash, this is not an accident. It’s a predictable and preventable event.To prevent injuries, people must accept responsibility for their actions and must take obvious steps to eliminate safety hazards.

Terry Newman, 51, was horrified when she heard about the weekend drowning of a 9-month-old baby who crawled through a open door and fell into a swimming pool.The accidental death of Tessa Coats struck a chord with Newman because the baby had been in the care of a grandmother. So this week Newman erected a pool fence because she regularly babysits a 13-month-old grandson who is just starting to toddle.“He’s so fast,” she said. “You just never know.”
What makes such tragedies even more gut-wrenching is so many deaths are preventable, said Merle Stoner, chairman of the Pool Safety Committee at ASTM International, a nonprofit organization that provides safety certification for an array of consumer goods, including swimming pool fences.“Most people are good parents who supervise their kids, but what happens is kids sneak outside when you think they’re indoors safe, and that’s when you have accidents,” Stoner said.Children must always be supervised around any water, urge public safety officials.
A private pool owner also bears a huge responsibility whether they realize it or not, with both financial and legal implications. A homeowner can be held responsible for any accident that happens in their pool. A pool owner is required to maintain a safe environment around the pool for all the people who may be on there property.

Remember this, the majority of child drownings involve responsible people from well off backgrounds who never for a second belive that such a tragedy could befall them. They are placed in good income brackets and can afford second houses, usually abroad, more often than not with lovely cristal clear swimming pool, when tragedy strikes they claim it was an “accident”.

Accidents are predictable and preventable events, so please, guard the little things in life.