Lack of fence can spell tragedy for children in home pools
Henry Bente turned his back for just a moment — and then couldn’t find his 17-month-old son, Zackary, in his Bel Air home.
He searched the yard in and around the family’s above-ground swimming pool that Sunday morning last July, with no success. That’s when he looked under a raft floating in the pool — and saw Zackary, alive but unconscious, at the bottom.
A year later, Zackary has recovered fully. But his parents and public safety officials say the family’s near-tragedy is a vivid reminder of the need for aggressive safety precautions around residential pools.
This summer alone, several children — including the grandsons of Carroll County Commissioner Donald I. Dell and former Anne Arundel County Councilman Theodore J. Sophocleus, among others — have survived near-drownings in family pools.
"Water is very attractive" to children, said Dr. Alice Ackerman, head of the University of Maryland Hospital’s Pediatric Critical Care division. They often "gravitate" to it, she said, and it’s not uncommon for children to jump into pools unattended, she said.
But safety experts say accidental drownings can be prevented by close supervision, fences and other safety equipment, and cardiopulmonary resuscitation and other first-aid training to deal with life-threatening accidents.
Residential pools account for a more than half of the nearly 1,100 children age 14 and younger who drown each year, according to statistics from the National Safe Kids Campaign, a nonprofit national coalition that works to prevent childhood injury.
According to the group:
As many as 90 percent of all drownings of children age 4 and under occur in residential pools. More than half occur in the child’s home pool.
About three-quarters of children who drown in pools had been missing for less than five minutes; about 70 percent were in the care of one or both parents.
For every child who drowns, an additional four are hospitalized for near-drownings, and many of those children have severe, permanent neurological disabilities.
Ackerman said the most obvious — and often ignored — rule is to supervise children at all times when using a pool.
Another important safety step for pool owners, she said, is to install a fence to control pool access.
Baltimore County regulations — similar to those in Baltimore — require that pools in residential areas be surrounded by a 4-foot fence secured with self-closing latches, said Rick Wisnom, head of code inspection for Baltimore County. Read More
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