‘Make it safer for your family’
Water safety advocate urges awareness and education for new pool owners
With more and more pools under construction by families seeking at-home recreation during the COVID-19 pandemic, a national water-safety advocate from Greenwich is joining with other parents who have been impacted by accidental drownings to make safety a priority at poolside get-togethers.
Karen Cohn, of Greenwich, held a teleconference last week with other parents and a congresswoman to alert new pool owners about the safety risks that they can pose to youngsters. The national spike in new pool construction in the past year should be accompanied by a rise in water-safety awareness, said Cohn, who lost her
6-year-old son, Zachary, to a pool-related accident in
2007. Homeowners who have installed new pools should make sure they know all about how pools operate and the safety measures that should be implemented, she said.
“More and more people are building pools and purchasing pools to put in their backyards, and we want to make sure they’re aware. If you’re building a new pool, please talk to your builder and ask them what you should put in to make it safer for your family,” Cohn said. “And make sure everyone is aware of drain safety, make sure they’re in place.”
Her son was a strong swimmer, but his arm became trapped in the powerful suction of the pool drain in the family’s backyard pool, and he drowned. Karen and her husband, Brian, founded the Zac Foundation in 2008 in his memory to promote pool safety across the nation.
Karen Cohn also advised pool owners to remove toys and floats from their pools when they are not in use — the water toys can “attract young children to go out into the pool” when no one is around.
The Zac Foundation is also working in a number of communities around the U.S. to instill pool-safety protocols with community groups and youth-camp supervisors.
The foundation usually runs ZAC Camps, which teach swimming safety to kids across the country, including at the Boys & Girls Club of Greenwich. But all the classes were canceled last year due to the coronavirus pandemic. That did not stop the foundation’s advocacy work, Cohn said, as the group focused on pool safety at home.
While the pool-construction boom is still in its early stages, a U.S. industry trade group for the pool business is estimating a rise of 10 percent in revenues in 2020. A backlog of pool construction has been observed in a number of regions around the U.S. due to increasing demand in the past year due to lockdowns and residents staying at home during the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Pool & Hot Tub Alliance.
The data on accidental drownings is still incomplete for the pandemic year of 2020, said Peter Feldman, commissioner of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. It is premature to say with certainty, he said, but “we may well expect to see an uptick in residential drownings” after the data is compiled.
Scott Taylor, a Minnesota man who lost a daughter, Abbey, to a pool accident in 2007, also recommended that all pool parties involving those feature designated “water watchers” who take turns doing nothing but watching young swimmers, wearing a lanyard or designated item of clothing.
“For the next 15 minutes, put the phone away and just watch the kids,” Taylor said, describing his suggestion for families to employ at a lake, seashore or backyard party. “Then someone else for 15 minutes. Never a gap in supervision.”
U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Fla., cited the statistics on drowning and young people. There are about 10 fatal drownings in the U.S. every day, she said, and two of them children. It is the leading cause of accidental death among children between the ages of 1 and 4.
“It just takes seconds. Drowning, it’s a silent killer, it’s not thrashing, it’s not a lot of noise,” Wasserman Schultz noted. Parents and caregivers should educate themselves on the signs of a child in distress in the water, often involving a vertical position in the water, with the head tilted back at the waterline, a blank expression, hair over the face, she said. The process is often completely silent.