Children and Pools: the Peril

Once again, we read of, and react to, the death of a child in a backyard Orange County swimming pool. We react in the hope that calling attention to such tragic and needless deaths will make an ever-widening impression on people of the inherent danger of a child being anywhere near a swimming pool without supervision.

Awareness may save another youngster’s life in situations in which far too many lives are being lost.

Last Tuesday, a 3-year-old boy was found in the bottom of his family’s backyard swimming pool in Santa Ana. He was dead on arrival at the hospital. Two days earlier, in Westminster, a 15-month-old boy drowned in the family’s backyard spa. In another case it was a 16-month-old girl.

In all, according to the coroner’s office, eight children under age 5 have died in backyard pools and spas in Orange County so far this year. The county, for whatever reason, usually has one of the worst records in the nation in drownings and near-drownings. That can and must change.

The scenario is generally the same. The youngster, who is usually between the ages of 1 and 4, wanders away from adults and somehow gets into the backyard. The adults notice the child missing. A quick and frantic search is made. The child is spotted--in the pool. Paramedics and police are called. The fight for life begins.

That drama is played out about 1,000 times a year in the county. Yes, 1,000 times. Most children are saved. Some of them, however, are saved only to live on, semicomatose, with brain damage.

Each year throughout the state about 140 youngsters under age 4 drown, and 40 more are pulled from pools with brain damage. Most of those tragedies can be avoided.

The first thing adults must do is recognize the ever-present danger of a backyard pool and impress that fact, along with pool safety rules, upon their children.

Adults should also know how to apply mouth-to-mouth and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. That knowledge, used between the time a child is pulled from the pool and the time that professional help arrives, can help save lives. So can constant attention that will keep the child away from the pool in the first place.