Deaths Grimly Herald ‘Drowning Season’ : Safety: Two more young victims attest to hazards of back-yard pools. Doctors and public officials pledge renewed education efforts, and tougher laws.

One day after he disconnected life-support systems from a toddler who fell into his parents’ back-yard spa, Dr. Gary Goodman was sad--and angry.

As assistant director of pediatric intensive care at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo, Goodman has watched children die from drownings every year, including three so far in 1991. But he never gets used to it.

“I go through phases with each of these drownings,” Goodman said Wednesday. “I feel very sorry for the family--that this child died unnecessarily. And then I really get enraged that these things happen, despite everyone’s efforts to keep them from happening.

“People don’t listen,” he said. “They hear over and over again that kids are dying in pools. But they always think their kid is different than someone else--that it’s only bad parents whose kids die in pools. But these are good parents--and it happens to them.”

Goodman, who has two small children of his own, added: “Every pool should have a fence around it, just like every car (that young children ride in) should have a car seat.”

Orange County’s season for drownings began in earnest this week with the deaths Tuesday of a 5-year-old girl who rode her tricycle through an open gate and into a pool and an 18-month-old boy from Mission Viejo who tumbled into an uncovered spa.

The 5-year-old, Ann Joo Heun Baik, was pronounced dead at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana on Tuesday afternoon.

The toddler, Christopher Steven Glass, had been in a coma since Sunday’s accident. But on Tuesday evening, at the request of Christopher’s distraught parents, Goodman disconnected the child’s mechanical breathing device, and the boy was pronounced dead.

Doctors, health advocates and public officials on Wednesday reacted by pledging renewed efforts to prevent back-yard drownings--not just with “pool safety tips,” but with a serious look at new ordinances.

County Health Officer Dr. L. Rex Ehling said Wednesday that he and his staff are studying tougher pool fencing laws and looking at whether requiring pool alarms would help prevent deaths.

In Orange County, as in most U.S. communities, local ordinances have long required pools to be fenced on three sides--to prevent trespassers from entering--but no fencing is mandated between the pool and the home. And there is no county requirement for a pool alarm system.

“I don’t want to say we need an ordinance,” Ehling cautioned, but he will meet next week with a top county building official to discuss the issue and will soon go to Sacramento to look at pool alarm systems.

Also, Gaddi H. Vasquez, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, said he is “very troubled” by this week’s deaths.

Vasquez on Wednesday morning asked staff members to see what can be done, including outreach efforts to Asian and Latino residents about pool safety.

“I have friends who lost a 2-year-old son in an apartment-building pool because someone left a gate open,” Vasquez said. “A child should not be able to get into it because somewhere someone didn’t securely close the pool gate.”

This week’s deaths also coincided with a mass mailing of pool safety tips to 1.4 million county homeowners by the Orange County Trauma Society and Children’s Hospital of Orange County.

“It sounds very callous to say we take this as an opportunity to go into full motion” to stress the dangers of back-yard pools and spas, said Dawnie Andrak, development director for the trauma group, but the deaths created “a perfect opportunity to stress again that drowning only takes a few seconds.”

The flyer, bearing the headline “Orange County Leads the Nation in Pool Drownings,” reminds parents to place a fence--or some barrier--between their child and the pool and to supervise children around pools constantly.

Also, the new Orange County Pool Safety Network has proposed a new pool fencing ordinance to Newport Beach, Irvine and other communities, said Maureen Williams, spokeswoman for the network.

In Orange County, drowning has long been the leading cause of accidental death for children ages 1 to 5. Last year--an average year for drownings here--40 people drowned, 10 of whom were children, said Dr. Hildy Meyers, a county epidemiologist. Another 57 children were involved in near-drownings, which can leave a child with irreversible brain damage.

Though drownings occur year round, Meyers noted that the county’s “drowning season,” when most accidents occur, comes when the weather is warm, doors are left open and children, left unsupervised a moment, are drawn to glistening pools.

Meyers recently won a three-year, $285,000 state grant to gather data on drownings and develop new pool-safety educational materials aimed at preventing them.

What prevention measures the project will recommend is not yet clear, but “we’re hoping to affect public policy,” Meyers said.