‘Most children who drown were last seen inside the house.’ : Couple With 3 Small Boys Buy Some Peace by Filling In Pool

Gary and Bimmy Keene of Mission Viejo love to swim.

But wary of the risk of drowning or injury for their three toddlers, the Keenes made a decision this summer to get rid of their back-yard pool.

After two weeks of work, the Keenes said Friday that they hope to have their swimming pool completedly filled with gravel and dirt by the end of this weekend.

“We’d been thinking about doing something with the pool for some time,” said Bimmy Keene, 35, a private-practice nurse. “Then the final straw came when we saw Barry, who’s 3 1/2, climbing over the protective fence by the pool. We decided to fill in the pool.”

For the past two weeks, tons of gravel and dirt has been dumped into the pool, after which it will be landscaped into a regular yard.

The Keenes, who live at 27162 El Retiro, have two other children: Grant, 2, and John Paul, 1. The three young boys are energetic handfuls, their mother says. And she adds that she and her husband have constantly worried about the danger posed by the pool.

“Our decision to do this has been building up a long time,” she said. “My husband, Gary, and I love to swim. He used to teach swimming, as a matter of fact. But we also have a recreation center pool here in Mission Viejo that’s near enough for us to use.”

Gary Keene, 37, a teacher at Newhart Junior High School in Mission Viejo, said the decision has meant quite a bit of hard work. “For a while, we had 100 tons of gravel on our driveway, and I was shoveling and hauling that to the back,” he said. “But we had a lot of good friends helping us. I can tell you that I really felt sore on one side the first day, and that’s when I learned to shovel on both sides.”

Bimmy Keene said that after she and her husband made the pool-closing decision, she called the Orange County Trauma Society for help and guidance. The society, based in Orange, is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing injuries and deaths from various traumas, including drowning.

Davine Abbott, the society’s program director, said Friday that the organization was pleased to help the Keenes. But Abbott emphasized that the Trauma Society does not think all pools have to be filled in to make them safe.

“One of our main goals is prevention of deaths by drowning,” Abbott said, adding that already in 1989, seven Orange County children have died from drownings in either swimming pools or spas. “Our society recommends layers of protection between the swimming pool and a house,” Abbott explained.

“We recommend that sliding glass doors from the house to the pool be self-closing and self-latching. We also recommend that a fence be around the pool and that it should be five feet high on all sides, with a self-closing, self-latching gate. The reason we recommend these layers of protection is because most children who drown in pools were last seen inside their house.”

Children have ways of quickly getting out of a house and into danger, she noted.

Bimmy Keene said that the Trauma Society helped her and her husband find donors for various materials needed to fill the pool. “We’ve gotten some wonderful donations, and just this morning, the A.G. Sod Co. came to the house and donated sod to cover the top of the pool,” she said.

The Keenes said the neighbors have been helpful and uncritical of the disruption during the two weeks of work needed to fill in the pool.

There have been some crank calls, Gary Keene acknowledged. And some of the calls have been from those criticizing him for “wasting an economic asset”--the swimming pool.

He said, however, that he and his wife have no regrets about their decision. “Basically, everything else pales in comparison when one thinks of the potential for tragedy that we’ve removed.”