Precautions and Swimming Pools
/The Boston Herald
The pool was full of people when Loretta went under - her mother, her sisters, my husband, our friends. She slipped into the deep end from the shallow end, the drop abrupt. Only my husband saw.
He fished her out and she came up sputtering. She was 9 or 10 at the time. She hadn't screamed or thrashed. If he hadn't been watching, she would have silently drowned.
Three children and one 21-year-old have drowned in four days in Massachusetts. One of the children was 3. According to the Centers for Disease Control, drowning is the leading cause of injury-related death for children ages 1 to 4. Most 1- to 4-year-olds drown in residential pools while in the care of one or both parents and are ``out of sight less than five minutes.'' For every child who dies, six more are involved in ``near-drowning incidents,'' which result in brain damage and lifelong disabilities.
There are precautions you can take - lock pool gates, install alarms, learn CPR and watch your kids constantly. Wrentham Police Sgt. William McGrath, in a conversation about the drowning Sunday of 3-year-old Karim Jaber in his family's above-ground pool, said that people should treat water like fire - that though it looks friendly it isn't, and that children need to be taught this.
Last August his 3-year-old nephew drowned in his family's Stoughton pool. The boy had been watching TV and then he wasn't. Karim and his brother had been running through a sprinkler and then they weren't. Kids drown that fast. Take your eyes off them for a minute and they're gone.
“Many children drown within a few feet of their parents when they are speaking on the phone or attending to a sibling. They make no sound, and once in the water are not easily visible,'' said Robert Lyons, inventor of Safety Turtle, a wristband sensor that he calls the ``last line of defense,'' because it shrieks when it and the child make contact with water.
Something not mentioned in any of the literature about keeping kids safe is the hazard of disposable diapers. They fill up and weigh a child down. A 3-pound diaper on a 24-pound toddler - and this is what a size 5 Pamper Cruiser weighs when a child is playing in a kiddie pool, never mind when a child is at a beach and the diaper is full of sand, too - is like a 20-pound weight in the pocket of a 160-pound adult. And the very children wearing them are the children most at risk for drowning.
The smallest things can save a life. “To avoid suffocation, keep the liner wraps away from babies and children. Do not place in cribs, beds, carriages and playpens. Pampers Cruisers, like almost any article of clothing, will burn if exposed to flame. Choking may result from anything babies might put in their mouths. To avoid risk of choking on plastic or padding, do not allow you child to tear the diaper. Discard any torn or unsealed diaper.’'
These are the cautions that come on a box of Pampers. There needs to be one more: To avoid risk of drowning, do not allow your child to wear near water.
