Pool: Danny Fulgencio

Pool: Danny Fulgencio

“Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event.”

Coupled with the picture of a crowded pool, those words, about three graphs down in the article, “Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Drowning”, are chilling.

As public pools reach capacity, and private pools become populated with our kiddos, their friends, our nieces, nephews, neighbors’ children, et al., knowing what to look for could save a life this summer.

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[Learn more about our neighborhood’s city pools.]

“Of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. According to the CDC, in 10 percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch the child do it, having no idea it is happening.”

In Dallas, as it is nationwide, drowning is the second leading cause of accidental-injury-related death among children ages 1 to 14 and the leading cause of accidental- injury-related death among children ages 1 to 4*

If you don’t wish to read the whole thing, at least remember this:

A drowning person, after an initial 20-second struggle, does not make a sound and they don’t thrash around. A drowning child might appear to be climbing an invisible ladder … have his head tilted back with mouth open … look as if she is trying to swim, but not making headway…

As the author points out, children make noise when they are playing in the pool. Silence is a red flag.

*According to a 2007 Children’s Medical Center Dallas report.

[Source: Slate.com]