COUNTYWIDE : Pool Safety Session to Weigh Standards

The city of Irvine is hosting a forum this afternoon for building officials and interested county residents to discuss tightening swimming pool safety standards that cities require.

The meeting will probably be attended by city and county building officials from throughout the area as well as by an official from the San Francisco office of the Consumer Products Safety Commission, said Robert Storchheim, Irvine’s manager of building, safety and engineering.

Irvine scheduled the meeting to discuss a model pool safety ordinance written by the local chapter of the International Conference of Building Officials. The building officials association wrote the model law after a rash of child drownings in the past few years, Storchheim said.

The biggest question cities will need to address when considering tougher standards is whether a fence--now required by most cities for swimming pools or hot tubs--must surround the pool, or whether one side of a house can act as the fourth wall of the fence, Storchheim said. Irvine’s current standard allows the house to be part of the required fence sealing off the pool, he said.

Advocates for tougher standards complain that current standards are ineffective because toddlers often fall into the pool after entering a back-yard pool area from inside the house.

“It’s been a big issue as far as the level of safety and types of pool enclosures that are considered reasonable,” Storchheim said.

Some of the tougher requirements being proposed, short of a total pool enclosure, are alarms on back-yard doors to notify parents when a child enters the pool area, Storchheim said.

The pool safety forum will be at 1:30 p.m. at Irvine City Hall.