From The Free Press Enterprise
By David Downey / Staff Writer
It’s hot outside and we want to get wet. And with miles of inviting beaches and the ubiquitous backyard pool, Southern California is awash with opportunity to cool off.
But the sparkling pools, lakes, rivers and ocean that beckon us carry serious risk, and every year fun outings turn into sad tragedies.
This summer is no different. Tragedy has already struck multiple times. For example:
- In Murrieta, 13-year-old Alex Pierce was severely injured June 3 at a pool party for a middle school band and choir. After a monthlong fight for his life, the teen was taken off life support this month after a test declared him brain-dead.
- In the past month alone, four drowning deaths have been reported in San Bernardino County, three of them children, according to Safe Kids Inland Empire. Five children have drowned since Jan. 1.
- There have been 10 drownings in Riverside County in 2016, the Riverside County Fire Department reports.
- There have been 15 drownings in Orange County, according to the Orange County Fire Authority. Nine victims were 50 or older.
The odds of surviving a brush with drowning are better with children. In Orange County the first half of this year, 12 children age 14 or youner got into trouble and one drowned. By comparison, in 10 close calls involving people at least 50 years old, nine led to death.
“With the older crowd, there are an awful lot more of them swimming alone,” said Al Murray, a Tustin councilman who chairs the Orange County Task Force on Drowning Prevention, created last summer to promote safety and uniform countywide reporting.
When older swimmers have a heart attack or experience some other emergency, Murray said, there is no one to rescue them.
All of this comes as summer is just getting warmed up.
“We still have the hottest months ahead of us,” said Michelle Parker, coordinator of Safe Kids Inland Empire, a program directed by Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital that aims to prevent child deaths from various causes, including drowning.
“Swimming Lessons in Riverside” – Click here for video
But while children are more likely to survive, the danger pools and other bodies of water pose to youngsters remains a huge concern.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is a leading cause of injury death across all age groups of children – and the No. 1 cause for babies to 4-year-olds.
And drowning statistics tell only part of the story. Experts say many children survive but suffer debilitating injuries that are difficult to bounce back from.
Chris Thunig knows all too well how brutal recovery can be.
In May 2015, Thunig was working on a project in the backyard of his Tustin home, near the pool. It was late in the day, he said. The sun was about to set. The kids were inside.
At some point, Thunig said, then-1 1/2-year-old son, C.J., slipped outside unnoticed – and fell into the pool.
Thunig was jolted by the chilling scream of his daughter. “Oh my God, C.J. is in the pool.”
Thunig turned to see his son floating, face down. He jumped in, pulled him out.
C.J., he said, was “blue in the face.”
At the time, Thunig didn’t know CPR. But he tried anyway. Thunig would find later, in a CPR class, that somehow, instinctively, he performed the procedure correctly for the most part.
But the prognosis wasn’t good. Upon arrival at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, “his vitals were awful,” Thunig said, and doctors warned his condition was “very serious.” The toddler had suffered a severe brain injury.
Thus began a long, painful recovery. And it’s far from over. Thunig, however, said he takes comfort from the remarkable progress C.J., who turns 3 next month, has made.
“We’re on our way to having a healthy child with some issues we hope to fix in therapy,” Thunig said.
He can’t walk, but he can stand with help. C.J. can’t put a sentence together, his father said, but he has learned to speak a few words. For now, though, he continues to breath with the aid of a trach tube through his neck and eat with the aid of a G tube through his abdomen.
“People who think it could never happen to them should think again,” Thunig said.
WITHOUT A SPLASH
And it all happened so fast.
“Unlike what you see on TV and in the movies, there was no noise,” Thunig said. “It was completely quiet, not even a splash.”
That’s typical. The Hollywood image of someone yelling loudly and frantically splashing is rarely how someone drowns, said Todd Leitz, spokesman for MySafe:LA, an advocacy group that promotes safety through education.
“It often happens without a sound, without anybody even realizing it,” Leitz said.
Parker, of Safe Kids Inland Empire, said children may struggle – but underwater.
“We’re talking about people who don’t know how to swim,” Parker said. “And they’re not able to keep themselves buoyant to make a splash.”
LOSING TRACK OF TIME
With that in mind, Parker recommends a deliberate strategy for poolside gatherings of children. She suggests designating a pool supervisor to do nothing but watch swimmers.
“It can’t be the same person throughout the party,” she added, saying people get tired. “We are all susceptible to becoming distracted, to losing track of time,” she said.
And if the pool watcher is drinking, said Dr. Paul Lubinsky, associate director at the pediatric intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), he or she won’t be able to pull a child out of the water.
“If the supervisor is getting drunk, that doesn’t help,” Lubinsky said.
Parker termed the watching strategy the single most important component of the “ABCs” of pool safety, the “A” standing for active adult supervision.
‘LIKE A STARFISH’
She said “B” stands for barriers – such as fences around pools and self-latching gates – and “C” denotes classes for adults and children alike.
For children, swim lessons are important. And they’re available all summer throughout the region.
An example is the two-week sessions held at Riverside City College’s Cutter Park Pool. There, dozens of goggle-wearing kids, from babies to early teens, splashed and kicked and practiced back floats on a recent July morning.
“Put your hands and legs out like a starfish,” instructor Karen Saucedo told four youngsters between ages 3 and 6. “Keep your tummy up.”
PANIC IN THE POOL
Jessica Henderson, manager of RCC swim lessons, said classes aim to teach techniques but also ease kids’ fears.
“Our goal here is to make them comfortable,” Henderson said, adding if they are they will be less likely to drown.
At least one student seemed to be comfortable.
“Watch this,” bouncy, chatty 3-year-old Mary Monville of Riverside shouted. “I can go underwater without my goggles.”
NOT A FAN
Lubinsky, however, warned against relying too much on lessons.
“I’m not a fan of drownproofing children,” he said. “It gives them a false sense of security. No one is drownproof.”
When a child falls in water, he or she doesn’t expect it – and often isn’t able to apply what he or she learned, Lubinsky said.
Lessons have been shown to help, though.
In March, 2-year-old Andrew Callahan quietly fell into a pool at his grandmother’s Murrieta home. A student of a water safety program, the boy floated on his back – as he had been taught – and his father rescued him without incident.
BREAKING RIBS
Classes are crucial for adults, too, experts say – to learn CPR.
Experts said it’s simply not enough to wait for paramedics. Whether CPR is administered while emergency responders are en route, they say, can mean the difference between life and death, or life with a severe injury.
Dr. Shamel Abd-Allah, chief of pediatric critical care at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital, said even if no one at the pool knows CPR someone should attempt to perform chest compressions.
“It’s better to break a few ribs than to not do CPR,” Abd-Allah said.
UNFORGIVING
There is no time to waste. “The body does the best it can to conserve oxygen,” he said. “Blood will be pumped more toward vital organs, such as the brain.”
But in short order, oxygen will be cut off.
“From a physiological standpoint,” Abd-Allah said, “the brain is the least forgiving organ when the heart stops.”
As for where water tragedies occur, most are reported in a swimming pool. In the Inland region, for example, six of 10 Riverside County drownings this year occurred in
pools.
And in Orange County, with its abundance of popular beaches, two-thirds of drowning close calls took place in pools.
That’s not to say people don’t drown in the ocean. They do.
TODDLERS AND SURF
Spencer Parker, ocean lifeguard specialist for the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s lifeguard division, said there were five drownings at county beaches in 2015 and there have been two so far this year.
“In the summertime we typically don’t have a lot of drownings because we are so heavily staffed,” Parker said. “Springtime, for us, is probably the most challenging part of the year for the lifeguards because we still have some very large swells, and our staffing is not up.”
The relatively small number of ocean drownings contrasts with immense crowds. Los Angeles County’s 73 miles of beaches drew 3 million sun seekers over Fourth of July weekend, he said.
Fortunately, said Lubinsky, the CHOC doctor, it’s rare for a very young child to succumb to the surf.
And the reason for that may offer a lesson in pool safety.
“We don’t see toddlers drown at the beach,” Lubinsky said. “Why? Nobody lets their toddler wander off at the beach.”
Staff writers Aaron Claverie, John M. Blodgett and Tom Sheridan contributed to this report.
Contact the writer: 951-368-9699 orddowney@pe.com
