IRVINE : Pools Called Leading Killer of Children

Marcia Kerr learned the hazards of swimming pools in her position with the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, but still, she told an audience, her son drowned in a back-yard swimming pool.

Gary Goodman, a pediatrician from Children’s Hospital of Orange County called swimming pools the No. 1 cause of accidental deaths for small children. He argued for multiple barriers to prevent children from accidentally falling into the water.

And representatives from manufacturers demonstrated pool-safety products Tuesday and urged their use during a meeting of city and county building officials sponsored by the city of Irvine.

The public meeting was intended to discuss a proposed new law offered by the International Conference of Building Officials that would require safety measures installed on all new pools, spas and hot tubs to help prevent child deaths.

Robert Storchheim, manager of Irvine’s Building, Safety and Engineering Department, said it is hoped the law will become a national standard for states, counties and cities. Before it is considered by other governments, however, Storchheim said he called the regional public hearing Tuesday to give the public, safety advocates and industry representatives a chance to comment on it.

Storchheim is a member of the International Conference of Building Officials’ pool safety committee.

Building officials from county government as well as several Orange County cities attended the hearing, including Irvine, Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Fullerton.

The proposed law would give pool builders several options to make pools safer. Many cities require pools to be fenced off. But if the house is used as one wall of the fence, as is typical, the homeowner would be required to install one of several extra features.

Those features could include a latched, self-closing door in any doorway leading from the home to the pool area; an alarm on any of those doors that would sound when opened unless a button were pushed, or an automatically powered pool cover.

The rule would apply only to new pools. But Newport Beach’s director of building and safety, Raimar Schuller, raised the question of whether owners of existing pools should also be held to tougher standards.

In Newport Beach, Schuller said, 90% of the pools the city is likely to have are already built.

Kerr said tougher standards would help save lives.

“If there had been a (separate) fence around our pool or a door alarm, I feel my son would still be alive,” she said.

Kerr’s pool had an electric cover, however, so it would have been acceptable under the proposed model ordinance. The cover was left open for the pool to be cleaned when her son crept into the back yard while under a baby-sitter’s care and drowned.

Al Palladino, 74, a pool-safety advocate from Orange, told the committee Tuesday that a separate fence around a pool is the only way to effectively reduce drownings. Alarms can be turned off during a party and forgotten and latching doors could become fire hazards if they couldn’t be opened by small children, Palladino said.