How Phoenix tamed a back yard ‘serial killer’ : The desert city led the nation in child drownings. A pool safety drive and new law cut these 911 calls 50%.

Greg Gallagher had owned a swimming pool for 10 years before he decided to fence it.

On the evening of Mother’s Day, the father of three paid dearly for his procrastination. While he was across the street discussing fence measurements with a neighbor, Gallagher’s 18-month-old daughter was being pulled unconscious from the family’s back yard spa.

The toddler had entered the pool area through an unlocked sliding door. She was rescued by a 9-year-old cousin and attended to by her mother. She regained consciousness soon and recovered fully.

After the near-tragedy, Gallagher quickly finished building a wrought-iron fence around the pool and spa, and urged others to do the same.

“Even though our story had a happy ending, I wouldn’t want anyone to have to go through what I did,” he said. “I felt like I had my guts ripped out.”

When the Gallaghers called 911 that day, Phoenix Fire Department paramedics responded. It was their eighth such call this year, and all involved children.

Only two of those emergencies resulted in deaths--a statistic far from comforting to the families of the 3-year-olds who died, but enormously heartening to those who have worked hard to prevent child drownings here.

The campaign began two years ago, in the middle of what was a particularly deadly year in Phoenix, a sun-drenched city of nearly 1 million people that one study found to have one of the highest ratios of pools to residences in the nation (about one pool per four dwellings).

In 1989, paramedics answered 101 drowning or near-drowning calls. Of the 79 children under 5 involved, 15 died--giving the desert city the dubious distinction of leading the nation in child drownings per capita.

“We were averaging one or two (calls) a day during the summer,” paramedics Capt. Bill Lietz recalled. “It was crazy.”

Clearly, something had to be done.

Labeling back yard pools a “serial killer,” Phoenix fire officials, with the help of a nonprofit community group and the medical community, launched an aggressive educational campaign aimed at preventing the most common types of pool accidents--those involving children.

In March, 1990, the Phoenix City Council passed what is regarded as the toughest pool-fencing law in the United States. Since May of that year, all new pools and spas have been required to have barrier fences (between the home and the pool). Existing pools at homes with children under 6 had to be fenced by May 4 of this year.

The law mandates five-foot-high fencing that meets stringent specifications designed to prevent intrusion by children. Or, a pool owner may install a motorized pool cover or self-latching, self-locking devices on all doors leading from the house to the pool area.

Lee Baxter, director of the western region of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, said that portion of the Phoenix law applying to existing pools is rare. The CPSC--which has established pool-fencing standards and has pushed for their adoption into building codes across the country--reported that only a handful of U.S. cities have such a law, and none as strict as the one in Phoenix.

(Los Angeles’ building code mandates fencing 4 1/2 feet high around all pools, but perimeter fences along the property line satisfy that requirement.)

Dr. David Beyda, director of pediatric critical care at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and an expert on child drowning, credited the Phoenix Fire Department’s informational campaign with a “dramatic” reduction in drowning statistics. From 1989 to last year, the number of incidents was cut to a record low of 48 and the number of child fatalities dropped to 11. Today, the number of drowning or near-drowning calls is about half of what it was at this time last year.

Authorities are confident that the law requiring fences around many pools will further reduce that number.

Alan Olson, the Phoenix official who oversees the barrier fencing program, said that perimeter fencing around pools has been the law in the city for as long as anyone can remember.

Getting pool owners to erect barrier fences, at an average cost of $1,000, or to child-proof doors, at a cost of about $50, will be more difficult, he said.

Noncompliance with any part of the city’s building code is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to $2,500, a jail term of up to six months, or both. Olson said the emphasis will be on compliance rather than punishment, however.

“I’d rather have them spend their money on a fence than on a fine,” he said. “The real penalty of the code is that if you don’t do it, you’ll have a problem with your children. And we don’t want that to happen to anybody.”