Pennsylvania Swimming Pool and Hot Tub Accidents: Is Your Swimming Pool Safe?
Swimming pools, diving boards and hot tubs often pose a significant risk of serious injury and even wrongful death if proper safety measures are not followed. Each year in Pennsylvania, swimming pool accidents claim the lives of many innocent children as well as thousands of adults. Homeowners, hotel owners and apartment owners who have pools owe a small responsibility to provide a safe environment for both children and adults but to many times this does not happen.
Often times a swimming pool draws children like a magnet. Swimming pool accidents are the second leading cause of death for children under the age of 14. Each year in the United States, 1,000 children die and 5,000 others are hospitalized with catastrophic injuries due to swimming-related accidents. Unbelievably, drowning is the leading cause of death among children ages 2-4. When a child submerges for 2 minutes or more in the water, the child loses consciousness. Irreversible brain damage sets in after 4-6 minutes of water submersion.
Diving board accidents or dives into shallow pools are responsible for about 10% of all catastrophic spinal cord injuries. The lawyers at the swimming pool injury law firm of Reiff and Bily have represented numerous Pennsylvania families and individuals who have suffered injury or death as the result of swimming accidents. Most swimming pool injuries occur because of improper design or improper construction or failure to properly secure the pool from small children or failure to maintain the pool in good condition.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission has provided the following guidelines for swimming pool safety:
1. Instruct babysitters about potential pool hazards to small children and the use of protective devices such as door alarms and latches. Emphasize the need for constant supervision.
2. Always keep an eye on your children while at or near a pool. Never leave a child unsupervised during social gatherings at or near a pool or appoint a designate protector or watcher to protect small children from pool accidents.
3. If a child is missing, check the pool first. Seconds count in preventing death or disability. Go to the edge of the pool, scan the bottom and surface of the entire pool area.
4. Do not allow a child in the pool without an adult. Do not consider your children drown-proof because they had swimming lessons. Children must be watched while they are swimming alone in the pool.
5. Do not think that flotation devices are a substitution for supervision while your child is swimming in a pool.
6. Learn CPR. Babysitters and other caretakers such as grandparents should always know CPR.
7. Always keep rescue equipment by the pool. Be sure a telephone is nearby with emergency numbers posted.
8. Remove toys from around and in the pool when not in use. Toys attract small children to pools.
9. Always make sure gates and pool barriers are secured. A tempered latch and lack of supervision is a common factor in most drownings and near drownings. Most of these drownings happen in a matter of seconds, in fact the time it takes to answer a phone. There is often no screaming or splashing to warn of trouble. Most drownings occur from routine household activities while adults are present and providing normal levels of supervision.
10. Most children who drown were last seen in the house and away from the pool or spa.
11. Always use multiple layers of protection between the child and water to ward and impede serious injury or drowning.
The lawyers at Reiff and Bily have been involved in cases where life guards were just simply not paying attention and were more interested in getting a sun tan, reading books or “picking up” girls than doing the job they were hired to do. The lawyers at Reiff and Bily have experience in investigating and pursuing drowning accidents and swimming pool drowning cases.
