ou can find a wealth of material in water-safety texts and pool-operation manuals. But much of it tends to be dated. The bibles of water safety simply cannot keep up with relatively new knowledge and information that has been discovered recently about drownings and vigilance. Much of this vitally important information may not have made it into the textbooks yet and, if it has, it may not be sufficiently emphasized. My Top 10 List is an attempt to highlight safety lapses and oversights that are documented after a drowning takes place. Many of these safety breaches or problems have only more recently been uncovered through lawsuits, empirical evidence and more structured observations.
1 Creating sign pollution
Want to make your pool or beach safer? Then streamline your signage. First, emphasize and enlarge the signs to make guests heed your warnings. Use large, highway-type signs for these vitally important messages and make every attempt to warn your guests at least three times before they get to water’s edge. Warning signs should utilize black/white; yellow/black; red/white color combinations.
Next, de-emphasize and relocate directional and housekeeping signs. At pools, the big three signs should be bans against shallow-water diving, breath-holding and underwater swimming. Signs should remind parents to watch their children. Informational, directional and housekeeping signs should use softer blue/white; green/white; brown/white color combinations — and place these smaller, less conspicuous signs on bulletin boards, membership cards, towel chits and the like.
At a beach, signs should warn patrons against big waves and strong currents, particularly rip currents.
2 Allowing breath-holding and underwater swimming
Whenever breath-holding and underwater swimming becomes competitive and repetitive, it can be life threatening. While the physiology of the underwater event is complicated, the results are quite simple: Death by drowning or cardiac arrhythmia. When it comes to breath-holding in the water, the rule should be simple and clear: Just Don’t Do It!
Remember, those most likely to succumb to “shallow-water blackout” are the most skilled people in the pool. As a result, lifeguards are not watching these veteran underwater swimmers the way they are watching less-gifted individuals. Though the statistics in this area are not great, underwater deaths seem to be on the increase. Finally, if coaches insist on hypoxic training, at the very least, they and their athletes should be warned of the risks. Parents should also be informed that this kind of training can be deadly.
3 Not demanding that parents watch their children
Too many parents taking their children to aquatics facilities check their brains at the door when they see lifeguards on duty. Conversely, no one can watch a child as well as a parent. To inundate young, teenage lifeguards with loads of kids in the water and ask them to watch each and every one carefully is not only unrealistic, but also unsafe. To make matters worse, when lifeguards see adults accompanying children to the facility, they naturally turn their attention to the unaccompanied or unsupervised children.
Parents must be warned and reminded to aggressively watch their children in the water. Eye-catching signage about parental supervision helps, but public announcements would be beneficial, too. In Illinois, signs posted at poolside warn parents that “Lifeguards are on duty to enforce rules and regulations and to respond to emergencies, but you are ultimately responsible for the safety of your child.” Similarly, the Lifesaving Society of Canada posts huge banners picturing a crying child along the slogan “Parents, if you’re more than an arm’s length away, you’ve gone too far!” In Canadian pools, this point is tough to miss.
4 Providing passive supervision
Just because lifeguards are certified does not mean they are qualified to respond to emergencies and deal with the public effectively. All those at aquatics facilities must be encouraged to practice active supervision as opposed to passive supervision.
Rather than passively sitting and waiting for something to go wrong, lifeguards should be encouraged to ask questions of guests without taking their eyes off the water. “First time to our facility? Do you know how to swim? Is that your child over there?” are all important questions lifeguards should ask. Likewise, supervisors should ask guards daily: “Are you doing OK? Do you need a break? Want some water? How many people are in your zone?” Some call this Management by Walking Around, but whatever you call it, it produces safer aquatics facilities.
5 Allowing water to become cloudy
There is absolutely no excuse for cloudy water in a well-managed pool. When the bottom drain is obscured, the entire pool must be closed immediately. Perhaps the greatest tragedy in our profession is when a child slips silently beneath the surface of the water and goes unnoticed on the pool bottom because of poor water clarity. If you can’t keep your water consistently clear, get help from pool-service professionals. If your pool does turn cloudy, close it and keep it closed until the water clears.
6 Sitting still too long
Today’s lifeguards, whether at beach, pool or waterpark, should be using the Five Minute Scanning Strategy to keep better track of their swimmers, to stay alert and be more vigilant on duty. The Five Minute Scan calls for significant posture, position and eye pattern changes every five minutes, plus a safety check that should include counting the patrons whenever possible. This surveillance technique is not only supported by research in a variety of fields, but also is supported by circadian rhythms research. Managers, supervisors and head lifeguards must get up off their backsides and out of their offices and do a walkabout every 30 minutes, if at all possible. If management is not located on site at the aquatics facility, then this 30 Minute Management check probably would be unrealistic. The point is to significantly increase supervision of the lifeguards and the facility to improve safety.
7 Not addressing suction entrapment
It is absolutely shocking how many aquatics facilities still can cause catastrophic suction entrapments by having only one supply line (drain) to the pump or having uncovered and unprotected main drains. Believe it or not, this still occurs with new pools. To protect people, particularly children, from being victims of suction entrapment with either a limb or a disembowelment, each and every pool pump must have a minimum of two supply lines or drains.
A variety of strategies must be utilized to prevent these injuries, including intact grates, anti-vortex covers, multiple outlets, and emergency shut-offs. Drain covers and grates must be checked on a regular basis, but in many aquatics facilities, they are never checked. This is simply inexcusable. Even with deeper pools, SCUBA divers can be used to check covers and anti-vortex plates. Ironically, many lifeguards and facility operators do not understand or appreciate the entrapment hazards that exist in their pools. Don’t let this happen to you. The payout could be between $29 million and $35 million in a lawsuit.
8 Not warning against headfirst entries
We now know that it takes really deep water to prevent catastrophic head and neck injuries whenever a headfirst entry is attempted at an aquatics facility. The magic diving depth for safety when attempting any dive is somewhere between 9 and 10 feet, regardless of the height from which the dive is initiated. We must aggressively and creatively utilize a variety of signs, graphics and warnings to prevent headfirst entries from the side of the pool in all aquatics facilities.
Please remember these two facts: While it takes less than two seconds to render a patron quadriplegic, springboard diving has never been a safety problem in this country. Dumb headfirst entries are dangerous, not springboard diving. In reality, nothing will separate a fool from his mission. Even the most aggressive campaign to stop diving into shallow water may not be successful, but at least your defensive strategies will assist you in a court of law.
9 Not developing group use policies
Large groups of children can really tax and challenge a lifeguard and can even produce unsafe aquatics facilities. Many groups (church, school, civic) are attracted to aquatics facilities because they provide certified lifeguards who not only protect their young guests, but also provide free baby-sitting and a break for teachers, parents and counselors. But when lifeguards see these groups coming, they tend to relax because they assume the adults will be watching the children. So rather than having double coverage, you end up having trouble.
It is shocking how quickly children can drown during a field trip to the beach or pool. Group use policies should include adult-to-child ratios, personal flotation device usage, nonswimmer rules, fecal accident policy and the like. These important rules and regulations should be in writing and signed by the group before it arrives at the facility. The facility management also might want to assign a lifeguard as a game-master to the group, not only to entertain but to safeguard it as well.
10 Fearing new technology
Why is it that we use technology to enhance just about every job and hobby we engage in, but when it comes to protecting lives in our aquatics facilities, we do it the old-fashioned way? We do it manually and mostly with young teenagers.
Drowning-detection systems are here, they work and they are affordable, particularly when you compare the cost of the system with a death and a resulting lawsuit. We have installed our first drowning-detection system at Penn State University and are thrilled by its performance. We are so convinced the system works that we are now looking to add another system to our large, 50-meter outdoor pool. We are using technology to assist our very competent and qualified lifeguards because we believe humans cannot remain vigilant for long periods of time, and that no one is perfect.
