For all of us that have, or have had, small children, we know all too well how quickly they can get themselves into trouble. One minute they are sitting on the couch watching tv and coloring, so you walk to the bathroom to grab a load of laundry, and literally seconds later you hear the the TV hit the floor. It might be that you hear the front door open and you wonder how in the world they got the door unlocked. Even worse, imagine hearing the back door open and knowing you have a pool out there. You can’t get there quick enough. Why is it that kids are so attracted to things that they are not supposed to have? I am sure you were the same way. These are all moments where a parent feels like their heart stops beating for a moment.
Swimming pool safety should be taken very seriously. Make sure you have many safeguards in place to protect your own children and others from the neighborhood. Most people have the obvious taken care of. They make sure their own kids can swim, install fences to keep other kids from wandering in, put high locks on the gates, and maybe even install door alarms so they know when their kids go out. But what happens when the unexpected happens, and a small child passes all those safeguards you have put in place? All those safeguards are equally important, but don’t ever feel completely safe without adding a POOL ALARM as your last layer of protection. Pool alarms electronically monitor the pool and sound an alarm when anything, including pets, enters the pool. When triggered, a loud pulsating alarm will sound at the pool and at a remote unit inside your home. Following are some very interesting and scary statistics to consider.
- there were 3,308 unintentional drownings in the United States, an average of nine people per day. (CDC 2006)
- Fatal drowning remains the second-leading cause of unintentional injury-related death for children ages 1 to 14 years (CDC 2005)
Children ages 1 to 4 years most likely drown in residential pools
70% of children who drown in residential pools had been:
- Last seen inside their home
- Within the last 5 minutes
- With one or both parents supervising
- It is estimated that for each drowning death, there are 1 to 4 nonfatal submersions serious enough to result in hospitalization. Children who still require cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) at the time they arrive at the emergency department have a poor prognosis, with at least half of survivors suffering significant neurologic impairment.
American Academy of Pediatrics
- Children under five and adolescents between the ages of 15-24 have the highest drowning rates.
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Males are 4 times more likely to drown than females