Kids saved from deadly gas at pool
● “I’m struggling to breathe.”
The 10-year-old girl who rasped out these words at the Greyville pool in Lenasia this week was the first of more than a dozen children exposed to a noxious gas emitted by a mixture of hydrochloric acid and chlorine.
Soon a second child experienced respiratory trouble, then a third; it was clear a potential crisis was unfolding.
In the end 13 children were taken to the nearby Lenmed Ahmed Kathrada Private Hospital on Monday evening, with five admitted to intensive care, where they were kept for two nights before being discharged, said Atlantis swimming club chair Abdul Rehman Bawa.
The quick response of the coaches and a retired doctor, who happened to be accompanying his granddaughter, made the difference for the 37 swimmers. The former physician created inhalers out of empty water bottles to assist the stricken kids.
Paediatric pulmonologist Dr Ziyaad Dangor, the father of the first victim who lives about 1km from the pool, got there quickly and dived in, though he insisted it was “an amazing community effort”.
“I know one mother — her own kid was asthmatic and out of breath — she went from ambulance to ambulance documenting everyone so that she could phone the parents and tell them There were a few parents who I thought were standout.”
Soon after 4.30pm on Monday, assistant coach Naeem Hassem noticed a lifeguard pouring a liquid into a well at the edge of the pool where he’d already placed chlorine chips.
Realising it was acid, he instructed swimmers to get out the water and shouted to head coach Julie Cassim, also the manager of the SA Commonwealth Games swimming team, on the other side of the pool.
Cassim said she saw chlorine gas fumes “billowing” through the inlet to the pool.
“This little girl came to me and said she couldn’t breathe She was starting to panic.”
The retired doctor’s grandchild was the second victim. At his suggestion they borrowed an asthma pump from one of the swimmers and gathered empty bottles with wide openings.
“We squirted the pump three times into each bottle and then got the kids to place them over their mouths and noses,” said Cassim, who called an ambulance.
Dangor said: “As I walked there my son, 15, was carrying my daughter towards me so I took her in my arms and she said she couldn’t breathe properly.
“They brought another girl who was also coughing continuously, and then they brought a third child they said was asthmatic,” he added, saying he examined them with the retired doctor’s stethoscope.
“While attending to the three of them, one of the parents said there was another child on the other side of the pool who is not doing well. I went across and this child was even worse. She was quite distressed and hyperventilating and struggling to breathe.”
Ambulances and paramedics arrived quickly and the coaches got the children into the showers to wash off any chemicals.
Some children vomited and had bloodshot eyes and rashes.
“Nobody in their right mind applies hydrochloric acid to chlorine,” Gerhard Verdoorn of the Griffin Poison Information Centre told the Sunday Times.
He said the mixture causes a volatile reaction and the resulting chlorine gas can be lethal. The effects would have been worse had the pool been indoors and the chlorine in granular form.
Verdoorn added that 99.9% of poisoning cases he dealt with involved people not adhering to warning labels on products.
Cassim said as the pandemonium unfolded the acting superintendent and the lifeguard didn’t offer help and even tried to knock off.
The City of Johannesburg, however, said in a written response to questions that “parents, coaches and staff tried to do the best they could”.
It said the matter was being investigated and that the two staff members had been “temporarily relocated to ease tensions and avoid confrontation”.
“The city does regular review procedures and training in the event of an emergency and under the circumstances this will be done as soon as possible in all the pools,” the municipality added.
Hassen Lorgat, whose 10-year-old son Zaki was the last to be released from hospital, said tensions with the pool staff had been long-standing.
The club had invested in equipment at the venue, including heaters and a pool cover, which parents and coaches believed was not always properly maintained.
Two of those who were admitted competed at a gala in Durban this weekend.
Bawa said the club had opened a case of gross negligence with the police. He provided a case number, but the police did not respond to requests for confirmation.