School’s reaction to near-drowning was quick and calming, parent says

A Saskatoon mother says the city ’s public school division did a good job calming students who were present when a young girl was rescued from a city pool during a year-end trip.

Tanya Napper’s children, in Grade 3 and Grade 5, were present at the Lawson Civic Centre when lifeguards pulled an unconscious student from the pool and started performing CPR on Tuesday.

She said the reaction from supervisors was quick.

“Parents and teachers got (students) into the change rooms and then they went back to school,” she said. “They had known something had happened, but they were for the most part removed.”

She said the students were then brought back to school, perhaps “just to resume some normalcy.”

At that point they were given an update by teachers and were told the girl was in hospital, but would recover, she said. “I can only speak on my own kids’ behalf, but that seemed to soothe their minds.”

Neither the Saskatoon Public School Division or Medavie Health Services West was able to provide an update on the girls condition on Thursday afternoon.

Lynne Lacroix, Saskatoon’s director of recreation and community development, said the city coordinates the number of lifeguards at a pool based on the number of people present. She said during the incident on Tuesday, the city had three on duty — the highest number of lifeguards in place for an event.

She said this is common practice for school swims, where a high number of swimmers are present and swimming levels vary widely.