Drowning
Private land owners, homeowners, business or property owners and/or management companies have a duty to keep any property they own reasonably safe for those who enter it. It is no different for the owners of pools, lakefront properties, artificial ponds or other bodies or water.
Owning a swimming pool brings a big responsibility to keep it safe. There are precautions a pool owner can take to make his or her pool a safe place to swim. This includes installing barriers, gates or fences to keep young children at a safe distance from the water; door alarms can also be useful to inform adults when someone enters the pool area.
Swimming Pool Hazards
If a neighbor, acquaintance, or public pool owner fails to take precautionary measures to protect children and adults from accidents, injury and even death can result. While drowning accidents can occur in a lake, pond or in the ocean by the beach, they most commonly occur in a residential pool. Pool-related accidents are the second leading cause of death for children under age 14, and the State of Florida has one of the highest incident rates of swimming pool accidents and deaths in the nation. In a matter of minutes, a child can drown in even a small amount of water. In many of these fatalities, lack of adult supervision, defective pool design, dangerous or poorly constructed pools, failure to maintain the pool, and failure to safely enclose the pool are the primary causes. In adult swimming pool injuries, failure to post adequate warning signs about depth has led to severe spinal cord, neck, and back injuries, and even death. Failure to provide adequate safety measures, such as covering a pool or hot tub when not in use, or providing adequate protective fencing, can draw children to a dangerous and unsupervised pool. Overlooking hazards like patio furniture, or failure to remove ladders, can also result in unexpected accidents. When a swimming pool owner fails to take precautions to make their pool safe, they may be at fault for the resulting accidental injuries or drowning deaths.
A variety of situations can lead to pool accidents, drowning and non-drowning. Electric products, such as a stereo plugged into a power cord near a pool, can put people in danger by increasing the likelihood that an electrocution accident can occur. Slips and falls on a diving board or surrounding pool area are other ways for swimming pool related injuries to occur. Young children are often the victims of drowning in swimming pools when a pool owner doesn't properly monitor the activity at his or her pool, or take precautions to make the pool safe.
About 300 children under the age of 5 drown each year in U.S. swimming pools. At the time of such incidents, most victims were being supervised by one or both parents. Nearly 70 percent of the children were not expected to be near the pool when they were found in the water. About two-thirds of the drowning deaths in the home, not including drowning in swimming pools, occur in bathtubs. Some of these deaths happen even when children are in bath seats or rings. Babies can drown in just 1 inch of water. Studies have demonstrated that even something as ordinary as a five-gallon bucket can present a drowning hazard to small children. A moment of carelessness can lead to tragedy.
Common Causes of Swimming Pool and Drowning Accidents
- Inadequate life saving equipment
- Lack of delineation between shallow and deep end of the pool
- No steps at the edge of the pool for exiting
- No clearly defined safety plan
- Inadequate training for lifeguards
- No buddy system in place
- No defibrillator available at a public pool
- Not properly maintained drains or maintenance equipment
- Failure to properly fence in the pool
Prevention Tips
The following precautions recommended by the Mayo Clinic can help keep children safer around swimming pools:
- Fence it in. Pools should be completely surrounded by fencing material at least 4 feet tall. A slatted fence should have no gaps wider than 4 inches, so kids can't squeeze through. Gates should be self-closing and self-latching. The latch should be out of a child's reach.
- Install alarms. If your house is one of the walls of your pool enclosure, any door leading to the pool area should be protected with an alarm. In addition, add an underwater pool alarm that sounds when something hits the water. Make sure you can hear the alarm inside the house.
- Cover it up. A motor-powered safety cover can provide a barrier over the water when the pool is not in use. The cover should withstand the weight of two adults and a child in case a rescue is needed.
- Choose an above-ground pool. Above-ground pools are much safer than in-ground pools because the height of the pool serves as a barrier. However, you should remove the steps or lock them behind a fence when the pool is not being used.
- Teach children to swim. Remember that swimming lessons won't drown-proof your child. The age to teach children to swim properly is the same as to ride a bike.
- Remove toys. Don't leave pool toys bobbing in the water when no one is using the pool. Children may try to retrieve a toy and fall in.
- Keep your eyes peeled. Never leave a child unsupervised near a pool. During social gatherings near pools, adults can take turns being the "designated watcher."
A personal injury attorney may be able to hold the owners accountable and demand compensation. Victims of water related accidents whether they occur in a private or public pool, lake, pond, retention area, or ocean may die or suffer brain injuries that require expensive life-long care and treatment. So many times these would have been avoidable consequences had the property owner exercised even a small amount of care to prevent the incident.
If you or a loved one has been injured in a swimming pool, hot tub, lake or other drowning accident, please call the Central Florida Swimming Pool and Drowning Accident Attorneys at Kane Law Firm, P.A. in Orlando, Florida, at (407) 898-9130, submit a contact form on our website, or email us at Info@KaneInjury.com.
We offer a free initial consultation, and if we agree to take your case, we will work on a contingency basis. This means we will get paid for our services only if there is a monetary award or recovery of funds.