A TRAGIC DROWNING - THIS ONE REALLY HITS HOME

A few weeks ago a 14 month old baby boy drowned in his grandparents' backyard swimming pool in Clearwater, Florida. This drowning made the local news and of course, as does every senseless drowning, made me shake my head because I know, as the manufacturer of pool safety fences, that every drowning is avoidable. Just yesterday I ran into an acquaintance and during the course of our conversation she told me that her nephew had recently passed away. Shocked, I asked her what happened and she told me that he drowned in his grandparents' swimming pool in Clearwater. That's when I realized that this is the baby I heard about on the news. There was no swimming pool fence around the swimming pool and there were many people at the house that tragic afternoon. No one person was designated to watch the baby and he slipped out the back door and fell into the pool. No adult realized he was missing until it was too late. This is such a senseless and unnecessary death....a pool safety fence would have saved this baby's life. The family is completely devastated and they have now had the pool filled in with concrete so that they're not reminded every day of the spot where little Jake died.

Over the years I've read about tragic drownings hundreds of times and worked on pool safety committees to bring awareness of the importance of a swimming pool safety fence to swimming pool owners, as well as those people who own a pool and have small children visit the house often. This is the first time, and hopefully the last, that the victim will be related to someone I know. My heartfelt condolences go out to the family of this baby and my hope is, as always, that people will realize that they can make their pools safe and secure by placing a pool fence around the pool.

Drowning Education and Prevention

Some officials have said that August is the deadliest month for child drowning. Here in Arizona many people are getting involved to raise awareness including the Phoenix police and fire departments, local news stations as well as some local pool fence and home builder companies.

After drowning had decreased in 2006, so far in 2007 11 children have drowned in the Phoenix Metro area, all of which were 100% preventable. Everyone has stepped up their efforts to get the word out "2 seconds is too long", a slogan made famous to help prevent child drowning. We try to educate parents to never take your eyes off your child around water, to ensure that you have a pool fence that fully enclosing your pool with a self closing gate. We also teach them to learn CPR.

Having these things in place may prevent your child from drowning. No one will ever know the pain a child drowning can cause until they have lived through it. It's part of our mission to educate these folks just how tragic it would be so that they never have to live with the brokenness of losing a child to a preventable drowning.