Backyard Rescue : Toddler’s Near-Drowning Raises New Alarm Over Threat of Pools

Thomas Hobbs of Villa Park celebrated his second birthday Friday but only because his sister had heard something peculiar in the backyard Thursday evening and knew what to do when she found him, blue and still, floating in the swimming pool.

Samantha Hobbs, 14, pulled her brother out of the water and, using techniques learned in a junior high school baby care class, gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Though apparently all right, Thomas was taken to Childrens Hospital of Orange County for observation. When he arrived, he became the fifth such child at the hospital, all 4 or younger, to have drowned or nearly drowned during the first six days of March.

“Three of the five have survived, one is dead and one is probably going to be abnormal,” said Dr. Ronald M. Perkin, director of the hospital’s intensive care unit. The one who died drowned in a bathtub, he said.

“We had a good year last year, but five so far this month--it’s scaring me to death.”

Shirley Gower, director of the Orange County Trauma Society, confirmed the grim figures. “And that’s not taking into account all the other hospitals,” she said. “And this is March. It’s not even swimming pool weather yet.”

Automobile accidents used to be the biggest killer of children 5 or under in Orange County, and they still are elsewhere in California.

But the advent of children’s car seats and safety campaigns have brought down the auto death toll among toddlers in Orange County while, for reasons no one is sure of, drownings have increased steeply, Gower said.

Most Common Cause of Death

According to the Trauma Society, drownings have become the most common cause of death for Orange County children 5 and under.

In 1979, five youngsters drowned in Orange County. In 1983, 17 drowned and 34 others came close, according to Gower’s statistics. Two-year-old children are the most common victims, she said.

Why the steep increase?

“We’ve been working on this for years,” she said. “It’s a hard question to answer.

“It’s a lack of awareness. I hate to say it, but it’s usually the parents’ faults. It’s, ‘I just went to answer the phone . . . .’ ”

“These are not ignorant people. People just shake their heads and ask, ‘Why?’ It’s not a matter of not caring, either. They’re just not sufficiently afraid and not sufficiently prepared. By and large, people won’t invest in . . . the proper pool cover and fencing.”

Tom Hobbs, a contractor, said he moved his family out of a house two years ago because it had a swimming pool “and we didn’t want to take the chance.”

They moved into their new house in Villa Park a month ago. It had a swimming pool, and they immediately ordered an additional fence to screen the pool from their youngest child, Hobbs said.

“We had to wait a week and a half, and I was in agony until the fence was up,” said Hobbs’ wife, Barbara. “Then we thought we were pretty well beyond risk.”

The couple went shopping Thursday night to prepare for Thomas’ birthday party Friday night. They left Samantha in charge.

Samantha said she walked through the backyard, and since Thomas wasn’t there, she assumed he had gone inside the house. She said she didn’t notice then that the gate to the swimming pool was open, but she did hear a slight noise, “like someone patting water.”

It wasn’t until she went inside the house and didn’t see Thomas that the sound began to hit home. She rushed outside and saw him floating face down, she said. When she pulled him out, he was blue around the eyes and mouth and wasn’t breathing, she said.

Brother Joined in Rescue

Her brother, Nathan, 11, joined in the rescue effort.

“By the time we got home, there wasn’t anything to do,” Tom Hobbs said. “They had called paramedics; everything was taken care of.

“I couldn’t be prouder of them.”

But Barbara Hobbs said it was unnerving to think that with all the precautions and care they had taken, the tragedy they feared still very nearly happened.

“We’re all going to take a CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) class together,” she said.

“What we have to do,” said Perkin, “is make people understand that when you leave a child in a bathtub or near a sauna or pool for any time at all, it’s dangerous. They can die from this, and it doesn’t take very long.”