Pool Safety

I just heard Nancy Baker interviewed on the radio about pool drain safety. Yikes. Scary stuff. I don't want to start a debate about whether federal legislation is necessary but rather remind people of the safety issues with pool drains. I have heard a little about this before but had no idea what the problem was (suction, hair entanglement, etc).

Here is a link to her site and some safety tips:

http://sk.convio.net/site/PageNavigator ... SafetyTips

If you have a pool at home, I think it would be worth making sure that your drains are safe. I'm going to find out who is in charge of the pool in our neighborhood and ask if necessary safety modifications have been made.

[Momo]

I posted awhile ,on a John Edwards thread, about this. His biggest case was a wrongful death case, where a little girl was disemboweled when she dove under & sat on the drain during a game of truth or dare.

[Urowife]

I posted awhile ,on a John Edwards thread, about this. His biggest case was a wrongful death case, where a little girl was disemboweled when she dove under & sat on the drain during a game of truth or dare.

Whoa! That's scary.

[rainbabies]

just recently another little girl had her intestines ripped out due to the strong suction at a public (i think) pool. scarry stuff!

The same thing happened at a neighborhood kiddie pool years ago when we were in Mobile.

I've also heard about little girls drowning in hot tubs when their hair gets sucked down the bottom drain while the whirlpool jets are going. Maybe I'll snopes that one...

Heidi,
I think that is what happened to the daughter of the woman I heard on the radio. I missed the beginning.

ETA: It wasn't her hair but that is mentioned as a possible source of entrapment. She did die in a hot tub.

Virginia Graeme Baker’s Story

Virginia Graeme Baker was lovingly known to her friends and family as Graeme (pronounced Graham). The granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker, Graeme went with her mother, Nancy, and four sisters to a family friend’s home for a graduation party on June 15, 2002. The focal point of the party was the swimming pool and hot tub.

Graeme had worn her swimsuit to the party and jumped into the pool as soon as they arrived. A short time later, Graeme’s older sister ran to her mother and said that Graeme was under water in the hot tub and would not come up. Nancy ran to the hot tub, but could only see a dark figure under the bubbles obscuring the surface.

Nancy jumped into the hot tub and discovered the horrific sight of her daughter’s unconscious body on the bottom. Not realizing that her daughter was trapped underwater by the suction of the whirlpool’s drain, Nancy desperately and unsuccessfully tried to pull her daughter out.

Two adult men at the party came and helped, finally managing to free Graeme and pulling so hard the drain cover broke in the process. Lifesaving efforts were immediately performed on the little girl, but she couldn’t be revived. She was flown to Fairfax Hospital in Virginia and pronounced dead.

Even at that time, her mother still did not understand what circumstances had led to her child drowning. The memory of seeing Graeme’s body, moving only by the current created from the whirlpool, haunts Nancy to this day.

Seven-year-old Graeme was a member of the community swim and diving team and had been swimming unassisted since she was 3 years old — but her death is listed as a drowning. She actually drowned by entrapment after being pinned underwater by hundreds of pounds of suction force from the drain of the hot tub.

Nancy struggled with understanding how it could have happened: Graeme was a strong swimmer -- it just didn’t make sense. What Nancy learned following Graeme’s death has given her the resolve to ensure her daughter’s death was not in vain. The preventability of Graeme’s death makes the loss more difficult and infuriating for Nancy to accept, and it is the major motivating factor in her work with Safe Kids Worldwide.

Nancy has mobilized other parents to lobby for federal advocacy efforts in Washington, D.C. Her efforts include testifying before the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2004 to discuss the need for anti-entrapment devices in pools and hot tubs. She has testified on Capitol Hill and has told her story through nationwide media outlets, including Larry King Live, CNN and in dozens of print and television pieces.

Nancy has made pool and hot tub entrapment a nationally-recognized issue. She is working to ensure that mandatory standards replace the voluntary standards that were in place when her child died but implemented in the building and servicing of pools and hot tubs in a haphazard and random fashion. This, she believes, has resulted in confusion within the industry, a lack of understanding of the danger and the solutions available to pool and hot tub owners, and ultimately tragic deaths and injuries.

The industry has suggested that it is the responsibility of homeowners to protect against entrapment. Given the lack of public awareness of the danger, coupled with a lack of understanding of available solutions by consumers and pool professionals alike, Nancy feels it is a grave risk to assume that pool owners can, or will, protect children from drowning by entrapment.

I just looked at the link above. Whoa, the picture of the little boy's stomach...

I tell my kids to stay AWAY from the pool drains.

I didn't know to tell my kids that but I will now. She also mentioned that the rings kids dive for sometimes get pulled toward the drain and that leads kids to the drain.

I seriously had no idea about this. I had heard a bit about pool drains but didn't know what the danger was. Yikes.

It's so hard to hear about someone's child dying.

There is a fine line between telling your kids how to be safe and and giving them TMI making them paranoid. Pool safety is right up there with stranger danger, though.

[SuzySunshine]

just recently another little girl had her intestines ripped out due to the strong suction at a public (i think) pool. scarry stuff!

This happened in Minnesota - it was all over the news for about a week and a half and they are now trying to get legislation put through her that would require older public pools in both athletic clubs and city pools to upgrade to a new filter system that shuts itself off so that something like this doesn't happen.

VERY scary.

Now I'm glad that our pool doesn't have a drain. We have to backwash to drain. Actually, I think our pool has a slow leak because our pool had basically no water when we opened it for the summer.

[Michele]

You know, this is something my mom always cautioned us about. We had a pool in our backyard growing up, and living in Florida, we were in and around pools are entire childhood. But honestly? I always thought she was just being paranoid and overcautious. I'd swam over our drain MANY times and actually pulled stuff out of it before....and the suction really never was that strong. But those pics are scary!! And I guess not every pool is the same with regards to drain suction. I now know where she was coming from. And even though I thought my mom was a crazy worrier....I did stay away from the drain as much as I could.

like I need something else to worry about???

no - it's good information. I won't even go look at the pictures.

Michele, I told DH about this and he said that he used to play games with the drain with his friends. He never knew to be careful about that (granted it was probably before there was much awareness about). They would dive for pennies and get them close to the drain and see if the pennies would get sucked in.

[Michele]

We used to dive for coins too!!!! At my uncles house....he'd throw what seemed like 20 bucks in change in the pool and it would keep my sis and I busy for hours while my parents hung out with the family. None ever got sucked into the drain either. :huh: