Two toddlers rushed to hospitals
Two toddlers Friday, and a third last week, all reported as “near drowning” incidents in the Santa Clarita Valley, have sparked concern among first responders.
“We’ve had too many of these lately,” Lt. Leo Bauer said late Friday afternoon, minutes after the second toddler Friday was taken to the hospital.
“It is incumbent upon the parents and guardians to keep an eye of kids by the pool,” he said.
In the first of two separate neardrowning incidents Friday, a toddler fell into a Saugus community pool and “almost drowned.”
Paramedics were dispatched to the community pool at the intersection of Mandel Court and Lanfranca Drive in Saugus at 12:31 p.m.
The boy was airlifted to a pediatric hospital in Northridge shortly after noon Friday.
He was breathing on his own, spitting up water, when paramedics arrived at the pool, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.
“Initially, it was reported as a child who almost drowned,” the Fire Department spokesman said. “(The boy) was conscious and breathing and spitting up water.”
Responding paramedics arranged to transfer the boy to a rescue helicopter and he was flown to Northridge Hospital-Medical Center.
The chopper landed in the school yard of Plum Canyon Elementary School on Alfreds Way, off of Plum Canyon Road, about a half-mile from the pool.
A group of children attending a nearby daycare watched as paramedics transferred the little boy to the helicopter.
In a separate incident that happened shortly after 5:15 p.m. Friday, paramedics and deputies rushed to a pool at a home on the 14400 block of West Grandifloras Road in Canyon Country for reports of a near drowning of a toddler.
Deputies arriving at the home pool found a 2-year-old boy “breathing and crying,” Bauer said.
“The patient was taken to a local hospital,” Fire Department Supervisor Cheryl Sims said.