With Christmas behind us, and the weather behaving itself, we have slipped into summer holidays mode – and the height of the swimming pool season.
As the temperatures soar we will gather around the pool like animals around a waterhole, while our young splash about in the water like crocodiles full of smiles and laughter. However, despite the family pool being the epitome of fun – kids and pools can be a deadly cocktail and is no place to let your guard down – not even for a matter of seconds.
Already this season, Royal Life Saving NSW Operations Manager Michael Ilinsky says: “In the past 10 days we have witnessed a ‘typhoon’ of pool deaths with four children under the age of four drowning in backyard pools in NSW alone.
Since December 19, there have been 18 water deaths in the state.
“Almost half of the national drowning figure in the last 12 months. This is a frightening commencement to the year, and devastating for families and communities,” he says. With such a bad start to the year, Ilinsky says, “We are concerned that families don’t think it can happen to them. But drowning can happen to anyone – rich, poor, friends, neighbours – it doesn’t discriminate.”
Top Comments
Pools frighten me to death. I have two tiny children who are super high energy with no fear. If they see a pool they run for it! I have to pick & choose events I go to carefully as I cannot let them out of my sight in unfamiliar environments let alone be distracted by conversations. It's draining & can be a bit isolating at times but they won't be like this forever.
It really is amazing how quickly it can happen, and with people all around. Two years ago I was at a wedding and the day after we were all around the pool. I was standing up to the legs in the water in the shallow end, with my 2.5 year old niece in front of me. I was 100% focused on her, to the exclusion of everyone else, seeing as how she can't swim at all. Unbeknownst to me, two kids nearly drowned behind me. An eight year old boy had jumped in the pool and discovered that he was totally out of his depth. He panicked, and naturally grabbed onto the nearest thing he could find, in this case his seven year old cousin. They were both under for around 15 secs before the adults around the side of the pool figured out what was happening. My sister jumped in the pool and dragged both of them to the surface and then everyone brought them to the side of the pool where they were understandably very distressed. There were three kids total in the pool: my niece and those two others, and six adults around the side. And it still could have resulted in tragedy if those around the pool hadn't been quicker.
My mother saved a kid from drowning in Italy. She was outside a museum where there was a fountain, surrounded by a patch of grass that no one was to walk on. My Mum was about 25m away and was watching a two year old mucking around on the grass while his grandmother was talking to someone a right near him. The kid went over to the fountain, looked closely, and then fell right in. And my Mum was the only one who saw. She raced over to the kid and he was lying on his back under the water, his eyes like saucers while he looked up at her, not moving, not waving any hands, certainly not swimming or floating. That kid was halfway dead. My Mum pulled him out and he instantly started breathing and then crying while she whacked him on the back and he coughed up water. The grandmother had multiple emotions, fury and embarrassment and relief all rolled into one, and my Mum was initially ticked off by the security guards who told her she shouldn't have been on the grass! There is a kid currently walking around Italy who is probably alive right now because my Mum saved his life.
I guess that take away from my stories here, and from so many other stories about drowning or near drowning is that it's SO QUICK.