Taming a Backyard Killer

Taming a Backyard Killer
It’s time to get serious about pool safety. Lives depend on it.

BY ANNE PAILLARD

One hot July afternoon last summer, Nathalie Léveillé of St. Hubert, Que., went to visit her sister and brother-in-law in Laval, along with her husband, Eric Vallée, and their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Joanie. As the couples chatted in the kitchen, Léveillé’s three-year-old nephew, Guyaume, asked if he and Joanie could play in the backyard. “In a few minutes,” his aunt replied. But at the child’s insistence, she agreed to let them go out, saying she would follow shortly.

A few minutes later, the adults heard Guyaume calling his cousin’s name. Léveillé’s brother-in-law went outside to investigate and found the pool gate open.

Then he spotted Joanie -- floating on her back in the in-ground pool, unconscious, her exposed skin blue from head to toe. Jumping in, he pulled her out and yelled for help.

“My first reflex was to just hold Joanie’s limp little body tight in my arms,” Léveillé says. “Then I realized she wasn’t breathing and had no pulse.”

Léveillé, who had been trained in CPR, began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. After a few excruciating minutes, the toddler coughed up water, opened her eyes and began to cry.

Later, the couples reconstructed what had happened. Guyaume had climbed onto a lawn chair and opened the gate to the pool, which hadn’t been padlocked that day, and the two children had headed for the water.

Incidents like this are happening far too often in Canada. After motor-vehicle accidents, backyard swimming-pool mishaps are the second leading cause of injury-related deaths of children, claiming 13 toddlers in 1998, an increase over the previous year. And according to Statistics Canada, for every child who dies, another three or four will be hospitalized after nearly drowning. Three to six percent of these kids will suffer severe disabilities arising from lack of oxygen to the brain.

Most of these accidents could have been prevented by proper fencing and a few simple precautions. Indeed, a 1999 Quebec Coroner’s study of accidental drownings in home swimming pools between 1990 and 1998 found that 75 percent were attributable to a door left open or unlocked, direct access to the pool, a crawl space under a fence, or an unsecured pool ladder. “Also, children can easily climb up on a pool filter, outdoor furniture or other objects left near the pool fence and gain access,” says Dr. Robert Conn, president of SMARTRISK, a nonprofit organization based in Toronto dedicated to preventing accidental death and injury in Canada.

According to safety expert Dr. Peter Barss, assistant professor of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Occupational Health at Montreal’s McGill University and author of The Canadian Red Cross Society’s 2000 National Drowning Report, none
of the pools where the 13 Canadian toddlers drowned in 1998 had a self-closing, self-latching gate.

“This simple, inexpensive device could eliminate about a third of toddler drownings,” he suggests.

Appropriate fencing is vital for child safety, Barss says. “Studies around the world have shown a significant reduction in the rate of toddler drownings in areas where effective pool-fencing laws were implemented.”

And studies of backyard pool drownings have also shown that enclosing the pool is safer than enclosing the property only. “Most victims of backyard drownings are young children of pool owners or of people visiting a relative or friend with a pool,” Barss points out.

As for those who claim that parental supervision eliminates the need for fencing, the experts say it’s simply impractical to suggest that parents should rely on vigilance alone to protect kids. “In most of the cases of toddler drownings I have reviewed, the parents weren’t negligent or irresponsible,” Barss says. “There was simply a moment of inattention or distraction.”

It’s impractical, too, to argue that parents should simply train kids to stay away from water. Small children are naturally curious, which makes them particularly vulnerable.

“A small child usually falls into the water unintentionally while trying to retrieve an object or while walking by the pool,” says Caroline Gagnon, national co-ordinator of first-aid services at The Canadian Red Cross Society in Ottawa.

Toddlers who fall into a pool accidentally generally do so quietly, without splashing or waving their limbs, and they almost invariably sink. Scientists believe a genetic reflex prompts them to turn onto their faces.

Facedown, an infant will gasp for air and his lungs will fill with water. Says Laura Bemrose, special-projects co-ordinator at the Lifesaving Society in Ottawa: “It takes only seconds for drowning to occur. It’s a silent death.”

Emergency CPR for the Unresponsive Adult or Child (Age 1-8 Years)

CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION FOR THE UNRESPONSIVE ADULT

Courtesy of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada (www.heartandstroke.ca)

Check the scene for safety, then determine unresponsiveness.

1. PHONE FIRST!
Call 911 or your local emergency
number, or have someone call
for you.

For persons over 25 kg: If there
is a semi-automatic external
defibrillator close by,
either get it or have someone
retrieve it for you. If the person
is less than 25 kg, perform CPR.

3. CHECK FOR BREATHING.

Take no longer than 10 seconds.
• Look at the chest
• Listen for breathing
• Feel for exhaled breath
If breathing normally, roll person on side --
keep airway clear.
If not breathing normally, give two slow
rescue breaths
• Watch for chest to rise
• Allow for exhalation between breaths

5. GIVE CHEST COMPRESSIONS.

• Provide 15 chest compressions
for adults and 5 for children
• Place the heel of one hand over
the lower half of the breastbone,
away from the lower tip
• For adults, place the other hand
on the first. For children, place the
other hand on the forhead to maintain
the head-tilt.
• Compress chest 15 times for the
adult and five times for the child, at
a rate of about 100 times per minute
• Provide 2 slow rescue breaths for
the adult, and one one slow rescue
breath for the child

2. OPEN THE AIRWAY.
Tilt head back and gently lift chin.

If you suspect a head, neck or
spinal injury, do not tilt the head.
4. CHECK FOR CIRCULATION.
Check for visible signs of
circulation -- take no longer than 10
seconds. Look for:
• Normal Breathing
• Coughing
• Movement
6. REASSESS AND REPEAT.

For the adult, repeat sets of 15
compressions followed by 2 rescue
breaths. For the child, repeat 5
compressions followed by 1 rescue
breath.
• Reassess for return of visible
signs of circulation after the
first 4 sets of 15:2 (about one
minute) for the adult, or after the
first 20 sets of 5:1 for the child
(about one minute) or if you notice
any change in the person's condition.
• Continue and stay with the
person until advanced life support
arrives.

For more information visit http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/index.html

One summer afternoon three years ago, two-year-old Olivia Robinson* was having a nap with her parents in their Toronto home. The toddler woke up and wandered out the kitchen patio door while her parents slept. There was no safety barrier between the patio and the aboveground pool, and Olivia ultimately fell in and drowned. Her father found her at the bottom. Says Barss, who reviewed the case: “The parents didn’t hear a thing.”

Pool-fencing regulations vary from municipality to municipality. “It’s a ridiculous situation,” says SMARTRISK’s Conn.

Related Links
The following links are for informational and educational use only. Reader's Digest does not endorse or guarantee any information contained therein.

Health Canada
Swimming pool safety

Children's Safety Association of Canada
Drowning prevention

In Sydney, N.S., Burnaby, B.C., and Laval, Que., new pools must be enclosed as well as equipped with a self-closing, self-latching gate. In Terrebonne, Que., however, new pool owners can choose to enclose the garden perimeter only. In many municipalities across Canada, there are simply no requirements at all.

In Ontario and Quebec, many municipalities require aboveground pools attached to a home’s patio to be enclosed on only three sides, as long as the house makes the fourth side. “How can that make sense?” Conn asks. “What they’re saying is that it’s okay for your own child to drown but not your neighbour’s kid. You need protection on all four sides.”

Just as car manufacturers must supply safety equipment such as seat belts, Barss says, pool vendors should, too. Insurance companies could play a role by encouraging people to fit their pools with a self-closing, self-latching gate.

The Lifesaving Society cautions, however, that having a pool fence may give some parents a false sense of security about their child’s safety. On a warm Saturday afternoon in May 1993, former world figure-skating champion Barbara Underhill, her husband and family members were busy preparing for the christening of the couple’s eight-month-old twins, Stephanie and Samantha, at their Mississauga home. Stephanie, who had been playing with her twin sister, somehow managed to crawl out of the house. She entered the pool area through a gate Underhill had left open moments earlier after planting flowers.

A few minutes later, Underhill’s husband found the infant in the shallow end of the pool. All efforts to resuscitate her failed. “A pool fence does not guarantee your child won’t drown,” says Underhill, marked forever by that day’s tragedy.

So what can be done to protect children from needless death? Stick to these rules:

Never leave young children alone near any water hazard, even if they can swim. In life-threatening situations, they seldom behave as they do during swimming lessons. The most recent National Drowning Report revealed that 95 percent of the infants and toddlers who drowned in 1998 were alone or with a minor.

Erect a fence with an automatic closing-and-locking system around the pool. Make sure no climbable objects are near the fence and that the filtration system is at least two metres from the pool. Never prop a pool gate open. The Canada Safety Council recommends pool fencing be at least 1 1/2 metres high, with vertical struts no more than ten centimetres apart. The fence must not be climbable, and the gate must be self-locking, with the latch positioned on the inside, out of the reach of children.

Know the danger times. Tragedies often occur on weekdays, in the late afternoon or early evening, when parents or caregivers are preoccupied with domestic chores and preparing meals, or are looking after visitors or other children.

If you’re a parent or a pool owner, learn resuscitation techniques. Many kids, like Joanie Vallée, can be saved even when they appear to have drowned.

Says Nathalie Léveillé: “It took at least 15 minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The attendants said Joanie would have died if I hadn’t intervened so quickly.”

According to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada, every year some 1.6 million Canadians receive training in CPR -- about 6.5 percent of the population aged 15 and over.

“We’re far from our goal of one member of every family having CPR training, however,” says Caroline Gagnon. Courses are available through branches of the Heart and Stroke Foundation, the Lifesaving Society, the St. John Ambulance and The Canadian Red Cross.

It’s also useful to have a chart illustrating CPR techniques posted at poolside. Research has shown that one year after doing a resuscitation course, people retain only about 20 percent of the information.

Be equipped. Safety equipment around the pool should include a rope, a solid pole or a life ring to provide assistance to a person in trouble; a phone with a list of emergency numbers; and a first-aid kit. Floating toys, which attract children, should be removed when the pool is not in use.

Begin swimming lessons or water-familiarization classes as soon as your child can follow instructions -- about age four. But don’t assume that the lessons are a substitute for supervision and pool fencing.

Finally, write to community organizations, your local newspaper and your elected representatives to get assurances that effective pool-fencing laws are enacted and enforced. Give your municipal authorities, pool seller and insurance agent a copy of this article, and make your feelings heard.