Officials stress water safety as pool season looms

By Jeff Pope

Tuesday, May 12, 2009 | 7:08 p.m.

The whistle blows and a lifeguard jumps in the water, hurries to the unconscious swimmer and pulls her to the edge of the pool, where first aid begins.

The particular incident wasn’t real. It was a staged exercise filmed for North Las Vegas Fire Department and University Medical Center emergency responders to use for training on unresponsive people pulled from the water.

With an estimated 100,000 pools in the valley, fire department officials said it pays to practice.

Community and municipal pools haven’t officially opened for the summer, but so far this year, 17 valley youths have nearly drowned and four toddlers have died from being submerged in water.

Three of those deaths happened in North Las Vegas, said Capt. Cedric Williams, fire department spokesman. The video from the Tuesday training at Silver Mesa Community Center will be available for the general public, too.

“The reason we wanted to do this is to bring awareness to our community as a whole with regard to paying attention not only to our children but adults that may not be able to swim,” Williams said.

Drowning is preventable in most cases if people take the right precautions, said Mike Bernstein, a health educator with the Southern Nevada Health District and Safe Kids Clark County.

There is no better drowning prevention than supervision, Williams said.

“You will never, ever hear a child drown. They call it the ‘silent killer’ for a reason,” he said.

Barriers, safety and CPR courses and keeping rescue devices nearby provide extra layers of protection during adult supervision lapses.

“The problem is in the 4-and-under age group. Those are the kids that are like, no matter how vigilant you are in supervising, there’s always some period where you don’t see them,” he said. “If you can do some or all of these things, what you’re doing is reducing the risk.”

Community and municipal agencies in the valley have made water safety a public health issue. The fire departments of North Las Vegas, Clark County and Henderson and the nonprofit organization Safe Kids Clark County produced public service announcements that air before shows at movie theaters.

The groups will unveil posters and highway billboards this summer pushing the message that it only takes a second for a young child to slip from view and find danger.

“Isn’t it amazing we haven’t even reached pool season yet and we’ve already had a significant number of incidents,” said Shelly Cochran, Safe Kids spokeswoman. “We have been working on this issue and we work on it year-round and we still need to find other ways to get the message out.”

While pools are the most common place for drowning deaths, any body of water just a couple inches deep can be a danger. One of the three deaths in North Las Vegas occurred in a 5-gallon barrel.

“We want this community to be aware that it can happen to anyone and it can happen at any time,” Williams said. “Two inches, that’s all it takes, and a few seconds.”

During the past weekend, five toddlers were submerged in incidents. One remains in critical condition, said Alma Angeles, Pediatric Trauma Program manager at UMC.

Of course, not all submersions end in deaths, Angeles said, but while the child is underwater, the brain is oxygen-deprived, which can cause long-term damage and disabilities.

Most of the 21 submersion incidents this year could have been avoided, Angeles said. The reason the death toll isn’t higher is that adults were nearby and able to respond quickly.

“I can tell you stories of events where they were family gatherings and there were people present. But it only takes a second for a child to walk away,” she said. “Not only were they preventable, but there were witnesses.”

Drowning isn’t the only worry in summer months -- the summer also means extreme heat in Las Vegas.

Angeles warned about leaving children alone in cars. Temperatures inside vehicles left in the summer sun are 25 to 30 degrees warmer than the outside temperature.

Leaving windows rolled down or engines running with the air conditioning on are enticing to carjackers, she said.

“So when you leave the child in that situation, it’s not only unsafe because of the heat, it is unsafe because of the true dangers that are present in our society,” she said.