California Injury Blog
Even as the summer season is drawing to a close, two more child drownings were reported this week in the Southland. The first one occurred in Walnut, in the 700 block of Janice Lane, and involved a 3-year-old boy who drowned in the family’s Jacuzzi Sept. 15, according to this news report. The second incident occurred in Fontana, in the 8700 block of Tangelo Avenue, when a toddler girl of almost 2 years old, drowned in the family’s backyard pool, according to this article.
Our hearts go out to these two Southern California families. Please keep them in your prayers.
What the rest of us need to learn from these tragedies is that we cannot take our little ones for granted. We cannot let them out of sight even for a few minutes. According to Fontana police, the girl had been out of sight for five or 10 minutes. The girl had walked to the backyard, opened the pool fence door (which had a latch but had not hooked) and fell in. By the time her parents found her and pulled her out of the water, it was too late. Attempts at resuscitating her were unsuccessful and she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
I recently received a heart-rending e-mail from Sandra Colwell who was responding to one of my blogs about swimming pool safety. I would like to share this because it conveys an extremely important message.
Sandra said her grandson, Bentley, drowned in their backyard pool. “We took all safety measures to insure he was never around water alone,” Sandra wrote. “His grandfather and mother were both home with him. His mother thought he was with his grandfather and his grandfather thought he was with his mother.”
Sandra says her advice to parents, grandparents and caregivers is: “Always…always know where your toddler is at all times. You can NEVER be too careful. We were and this horrible tragedy still occurred. We miss (Bentley) sooooo much.”
Swimming pool accidents not only result in heartache and grief for the families of victims, but if a neighbor or an acquaintance’s child drowns or is injured in your backyard pool, you could be held liable. Please take additional caution if you have a pool or Jacuzzi in your home and always make sure your little ones are constantly supervised.
For more information about swimming pool safety and other water safety tips, please visit this Web site.