Child Drowns, 2 Others Hurt in Pools

On the same morning the Orange County Fire Authority and Children’s Hospital of Orange County announced a campaign to prevent pool drownings, one child died in an Anaheim pool and two more were injured--one critically--after climbing into a backyard spa in Fullerton.

“When we were notified, I just felt sick,” Fire Authority Capt. Scott Brown said of the Thursday morning accidents. “This should be a wake-up call to the community. Pools and children are a deadly combination.”

Already this year, the Fire Authority has responded to 24 near-drownings and four drownings. Drowning remains the leading cause of accidental death to children under 5, and California leads the nation in those deaths.

After an alarming 35 drownings and near-drownings in Orange County in 1996--equal to the total from the previous three years combined--the hospital and Fire Authority joined to start their safety program: “Children drown without a sound--Watch the water.”

Word of Thursday’s two accidents--in which a 3-year-old Utah girl died and a 1-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy were injured--came just as safety officials were preparing for the morning news conference at Fairview Developmental Center in Costa Mesa.

“We’re off to a very disturbing start,” Brown said. “It’s going to cause us to redouble our efforts. We’re not giving up this fight.”

A Fullerton woman was baby-sitting the 1-year-old girl and 2-year-old boy at her home in the 2600 block of Tiffany Place, according to next-door neighbor Rick Murphy. About 9 a.m. he heard firetruck sirens stopping on the street.

“I could hear voices by the pool, and I went, ‘Oh, no,’ ” Murphy said. When he looked over the fence, he saw firefighters and police trying to resuscitate the boy next to the pool, while the girl lay crying nearby. Murphy’s wife consoled the baby-sitter, who “was soaking wet.”

“She had gone into the water, obviously, after the child or children,” Murphy said. “She appeared to be quite distraught.

“It’s so tragic. It’s so sad.”

The children are not related to each other or the baby-sitter, police said. They were not identified.

Fullerton Police Lt. Geoff Spalding said the baby-sitter was not running a day-care center out of her home, and investigators found no evidence of criminal action.

The boy and girl were taken to St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, then transferred to CHOC, in Orange. The boy was in critical condition on a ventilator in the pediatric intensive care unit, while the girl was listed in good condition, officials said.

In the Anaheim case, the 3-year-old daughter of a vacationing family from Provo, Utah, fell into the pool of a Comfort Suites motel while a 25-year-old uncle, who was watching her and two other children, walked to the nearby office for a set of keys.

Despite CPR efforts, the girl was pronounced dead at UCI Medical Center in Orange at 10:55 a.m., about 40 minutes after she was found in the water.

Investigators were still trying to piece together what happened Thursday afternoon. And the coroner’s office had not released the girl’s name as of Thursday night because they were not able to reach her parents.

“It’s sort of a herald of summer that this has occurred,” said Jim Cappon, attending physician at the CHOC pediatric ICU. “It has been for years and will be for years and years to come.”

With the advent of warm weather and summer vacations, more children end up playing near the water. But child drownings don’t have to automatically follow, Brown said, if proper precautions are taken.

Officials stressed that adults should never leave a child alone, never rely on swimming lessons to “drown-proof” a child, look in the pool first if a child is missing, learn CPR and use multiple safety devices--alarms and locks and fences and pool covers in combination.

Authorities also urged the designation of one adult as a “water watcher” at pool- or beach-side gatherings. Another adult should be tapped just to watch the children in the area.

“It doesn’t matter how wealthy you are or your education or your ethnicity,” said Mary Marlin, child health advocate at CHOC. “The water doesn’t care.

“If you don’t believe it can happen to our children, then we will be unprepared and the water will win.”

For more information about water safety, free CPR classes and free seminars for community groups, call the Fire Authority at (714) 744-0496 or CHOC at (714) 532-8887.