Drowning doesn't look like drowning

Someone posted this on their Facebook page. Read it. It explains how and why children, and others, can drown surrounded by others, and nobody sees until it's too late.

tl

I'm so glad you posted this. You're a nurse, correct?

My husband used to be the administrator of a Christian school--two of my eldest daughters classmates, both faculty kids, drowned in the summer of 06, both at family gatherings where everyone thought someone else was watching.

Two 4-year-olds drowned within 10 feet of their parents and grandparents. and these were invested, cautious parents.

we're insanely vigilant now. one-to-one ratio (kid-to-grown-up), arms reach at all times. and our kids can SWIM.

Listen up, people, the season's upon us.

Yes, I'm a nurse (well, until I became disabled in 2007--not sure WHAT I am now!), but working labor and delivery didn't teach me a lot about drowning. I had never heard of these details before about the physiology of drowning, and the physical inability to make a sound or gesture for help. My kids are lucky they survived me!!!

tl

Thanks for posting this, tl! There was a 9yo boy who drowned near here last week! I'm posting this link on my Facebook page!

excellent notice tl.

you know how paranoid I am with Mikey

Liz says kids up to 4 years can drown in 5cm of water thats 1.9inches!! and that 25% of drowning victims arriving in the ED die and a further 31% who survive have serious neurology problems

shut the pool gates folks & supervise the kids in person

I found this so interesting, and frightening because it's so easy to miss. They just look like they're swimming...very low in the water! Hi to all your family.

tl

Thanks for posting this. Sadly, living in Florida downing are something we have to be aware of. The gulf waters are very shallow here and we don't get heavy surf like CA. So ocean drownings are not common. The most common reason for drowning's here are pools. There was a young baby (under one) who somehow got out of his crib and made his way to the pool. They didn't find him for over an hour because they thought he was napping.
In our first house down here the first thing we did was put in a baby fence around the pool. The house we live in now already had one. All our children are older and can swim but we still keep it up. I took it down recently to clean it and to clean the decking because we had visitors coming. They were going to stay with us for a few days. They have 3 boys ages 11, 4 and 9 months. The 4 year old can't swim. I asked our boys to put the fence back up. The dad of the kids said not to worry about it. I told him my concerns and he said "He knows better than to go near the pool." The fence went up within the hour. I don't care if people think "My kid would never (fill in the blank)" It's not going to happen on my watch.

I almost drowned exactly like that when I was about 5yo.

I could see my mom, not ten feet from me. The neighbor saw what was going on and grabbed me.

I've never seen drowning written up like that before. I thought I was just weird because I could not yell or move.

Thanks for posting that!

Another thing to worry about is distractions. If it is a crowded beach (or a busy pool party) it is hard to tell if someone is in trouble. We went to a party at a condo complex and there were quite a few people in the pool. All our kids can swim but I still sat pool side keeping an eye on them.

Neak's youngest son (9--and nobody understands how he's survived that long!) is the kind of kid that you say, "My kid will ALWAYS..." Right now he's in the middle of a series of rabies shots after getting bitten by a wild mouse who objected toothily to being caught by, and cradled in, the hand of a Dervish.

I'm not sure he's any more at risk, though, than the child of a parent who says, "My child would NEVER..."

tl

I am in California and there are many pools in the backyards of houses. We have one ourselves. We don't have any kids and at this point do not have a fence around our pool. Even if we did have kids while living here I don't see putting a fence around it, it is a small yard and the doors have special locks on them. I just feel as long the kids learn to swim at a young age they will be fine. I swam with friends when I was young and no adults were around for hours at a time.

Here is a story about how people react even when they do see someone in trouble. When my sister was around 7 my dad took her fishing of a bridge in MA. There was a large river under the bridge. There were other people fishing there also. My sister had a ball and it rolled into the river. She jumped in to get it!!!! My dad saw it happening and didn't move. The guy next to him realized what happened and dove in to get my sister. My dad had guilt for years after. He couldn't understand why he froze.

Never let facts get in the way of a firm opinion. I didn't drown when I was a kid either, but I don't think that proves anything except that I didn't drown when I was a kid. Or a youth. Or an adult, for that matter. How this indisputable fact would extrapolate out into safety for anybody else is beyond me. And I'm in CA, too.

tl

CA liability for private swimming pools

Here's a link from a site about "swimming pool drowning lawyers." You might be interested in knowing, as a Californian, what your liability could be if a child drowns in your unfenced swimming pool. Unless, of course, they learned to swim when they were young. Then, using your logic, this surely wouldn't apply to them. Or you.

tl

This almost happened to me to when I was about 5 or 6. It's one of my earliest memories. I was at the beach with my aunt and cousins and some of their friends, and even though I didn't know how to swim, I saw this pretty seashell not very far offshore and I thought I could get it. I never even saw the wave that swept me under. I remember being under the water, unable to breathe or move. I could still see the shell. I wasn't thrashing around or yelling at all because I couldn't. Luckily, my aunt's friends wasn't too far away and saw what was happening. She pulled me out of the water and that's when I started thrashing and screaming. She finally had to slap me to get me to stop. It remains one of my most vivid and frightening memories from childhood. I'm still uneasy around water and am not a very good swimmer. I've only been swimming (really swimming, not just playing in the waves) in the ocean one time since then, and even then, I was on a boogie board.

I'm going to see a good friend of ours tomorrow. He's a personal injury lawyer. I'll have to ask him how much he could conceivably get for an unsupervised drowning in a private, unfenced pool.

tl

There are no laws about fencing in a pool in CA? Kids can figure out locks, you never know. You may rethink things if you do have kids.
I would also be worried that someone would come into my yard and drown in my pool. I would also be worried about that person's family suing me. JMO

The part about a tresspaser coming on the property and being able to file suit for anything is just wrong. You break into or tresspass onto someones property, you should basically lose the right to press any charges.

As for presses charges against anyone when a drowning happens, I see no reason for that. If I had children and went to someone elses property and they drowned, it would be a tragic accident. Presses charges, would never come to mind, unless something was done intentionally to hurt the children. Accidents happen, I have never been a fan of pressing charges or sueing people.

I'm not a fan of pressing charges or suing people either, unless they are truly being negligent, and I do believe it is negligent to have an unfenced pool. If there isn't a law here in CA that requires pools to be fenced, there certainly should be. I hear about accidental drownings in backyard pools all the time in the news here, and it's a horrible and very preventable tragedy. Really, is installing a fence too much to ask if it could mean saving the life of a child?

When my son was about 2 years old I was swimming with him in a small pool. He was standing on a ledge by the stairs, and suddenly decided to step off. I was about three yards from him and watched him step off and slip silently under the water. His eyes were open, but he never thrashed or made a peep. I immediately grabbed him out and got him to take a breath. Had I been talking to someone or looking away, he would have been dead. That was a great wake-up call to see just how quickly and quietly a drowning can occur.

A group I was with decided to walk across a crystal clear river because there was a shallow section, only about a foot deep, and it was too cold to swim across. We could easily see the river stones at the bottom. We couldn't see the hole; it all looked like a foot-deep river clear to the opposite bank. I am the one who stepped into the hole.

I was completely dumbfounded. I could not believe that I was in water over my head, so I got stupid. I had taken one step forward, so all I had to do was take one step back and get back to where I had been. It did not occur to me that I could not step backwards out of a hole and it did not occur to me to swim.

My friends saw just what was described in the article. They were also dumbfounded because they knew I could swim and could not believe that I had not instantly started doing so.

I was breathing water without realizing it. It did not hurt. I was in bright sunshine and crystal clear very cold water, but I reached a point where I somehow decided to go into �the warm darkness�. It was the most peaceful moment in my life. I don�t know where the phrase �warm darkness� came from, but my niece used the same phrase several years later to describe what took her over as she prayed and her husband took his last breath (young adult death from cancer).

My friends finally got a grip and yanked me out before I floated away in the current. My throat and chest hurt from the water, but that was the only physical pain of the entire experience. Drowning is a pretty easy way to go I think.

NZ is two long skinny islands, hence we are surrounded by water and most of us learn to swim at a very early age. We also have a great climate and people have pools. Pool fencing is compulsory here, and so it should be whether you have kids or not. 30 years ago our neighbour's 2 year old child, who wasn't being watched for about 2 minutes, wandered next door and drowned in the next door neighbour's (then unfenced) pool. It is gross negligence not to fence a pool.

I guess that depends on how aware you are at the time. My uncle (who was drunk at the time) drowned in the Mississippi River as a very young man. It was horrible for his wife and child. I was a child myself so I don't really remember, but I know my dad hurt over that for years.