ORANGE COUNTY PERSPECTIVE : Pool’s Price Is Eternal Vigilance

The near-drowning of two children in their grandparents’ swimming pool in Fullerton this week served as a grim reminder of the dangers of back-yard pools. The string of warm, sunny days in April has brought renewed attention to this recurring problem for Orange County. It’s a place blessed by the sun and cursed by a statistic: Drowning deaths are the leading cause of injury deaths among children here. In fact, an average of 17 children under the age of 9, an astonishingly high number, have drowned every year in the county since 1978.

Orange County drowning-prevention experts have a full list of suggestions to help prevent such tragedies. Some have to do with security measures, others with vigilance.For example:

Don’t allow a child near a pool unless he or she is watched constantly; enclose the pool with a five-foot-high fence and self-latching gate; use a pool cover--preferably one you can see through in case a child somehow crawls under it; put a child-proof latch on the back door; learn CPR and don’t rely on children’s swimming lessons to save youngsters who fall in; put a telephone by the pool, both for an emergency and to allow the adult to keep standing watch when the phone rings.

All are common-sense suggestions. But what they require is extraordinary attention to detail. Anyone with a back-yard pool accessible to children should be willing to spend some extra money as well. Even with such precautions, Dr. Hildy Meyers, an epidemiologist with the County Health Care Agency, reminds us, “It only takes a second.”

Most of us associate swimming pools with getting away from it all. But if children are around, pool owners have to understand that they are on the job all the time.