Drowning is the leading cause of unintentional death for children ages 1-4. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10 drowning deaths occur per day in the U.S. In addition to fatalities, thousands of children are hospitalized each year, with many suffering brain or lung injuries. Most of those drownings occur in home swimming pools. This local story from Alicia C. is about what you can do to help in a drowning situation.
I was at Dania Beach with my husband, young daughter, and a group of families. One minute I am mingling with my child’s friends and their parents, enjoying an effortless day with my toes in the sand…
The next minute, we witness a father pulling his lifeless child out of the shallow water. The young boy’s face is red and his father is in disbelief, trying to shake the life back into him. The boy is 4, but petite, and is wearing a puddle-jumper swim vest, fully connected. He had been in very shallow water. The inlet is low tide. His father was almost within arm’s reach of him and interacting with him moments before.
Our friends, Kandice and Jen O., are first responders and jump in to give this frantic family assistance. A crowd envelops the boy and the two firefighters, which shields the graphic nature of this situation from our children. The boy is in serious trouble.
The family is agonizing over the reality of what is happening, helpless to do anything but worry and to scream in fear. It is crushing my soul to bear witness to. Their cries of devastation will haunt me. Then an ER nurse, Abigail B. from Massachusetts, jumps off a parked boat to assist.
The boy begins to turn blue, and the three of them start CPR. At this point, we have to redirect our children’s attention. We try for a minute to put on this act for our children, and we downplay what is occurring, but time keeps moving on, and eventually, I feel that we need divine intervention. So, my child, my husband, and I pray on our knees for this little one.
Suddenly, we see our firefighter friends carrying this child and sprinting (barefoot) all the way down the long, long path to the parking lot. They are trying to get this child to the ambulance because the ambulance can’t drive out to where we are.
I have never seen something so heroic in my whole life. This child lived. This child made a full recovery — through the miracle performed by these three strangers (on their day off, with no equipment, no warning, no gear, nothing, just their strength and willingness to do whatever it takes).
We are putting in a swimming pool this month, and I always had a fear of the hazardous risks they pose to children my child’s age. There may not always be a first responder around, so I am committed to getting recertified in CPR, and anyone else who lives in Florida should too
Kandice and Jen recommend the following precautions for everyone, not just parents of children:
- Take swimming lessons (even for adults who may have to save themselves or a child). Flotation devices should never be substitutes for attentive adults.
- Designating a “water watcher” is a necessity if more than one person is watching kids. Accidents often happen with large gatherings because it’s easy for each adult to assume someone else is watching for danger.
- Learn CPR/first aid, so that you can save a life if the time comes.
“Anybody who knew CPR could’ve contributed to that happy ending,” says Kandice. “And the fact that the parents weren’t actually very complicit should be a lesson to us all.”
For more information on National Drowning Prevention Awareness Month (which was in May), visit the National Drowning Prevention Alliance at ndpa.org. Also, check out the Parklander’s® May 2021 article on pool safety fences.