POOL SAFETY CHECKLIST

77 percent of the children who drowned had been seen 5 minutes or less before being missed and subsequently discovered in the pool.

Supervision is always your primary layer of pool safety protection, but as the study shows, 69 percent of the drowning incidents occurred when parental supervision failed and there were no other “backup layers” in use.

1. Access doors to the pool area with high locks are a secondary layer of pool safety protection.
2. Alarms on access doors are another layer of protection.
3. A pool fence separating the pool from your home and all access doors and entrances is one more layer of protection.
4. Alarms both in the pool (pool alarm) and worn on the child (personal immersion alarm).
5. Water survival training for a child when he is capable of crawling or walking to the pool.
6. CPR and your knowledge of rescue techniques are a final layer of protection should there be an accident.

The goal, with instituted layers of protection, is to come as close to a “fail safe” system of preventing drowning incidents as possible. This way, if there is a momentary lapse of supervision for whatever reason, we have several backup systems in place.

All must fail before a drowning can take place. A door has been left unlocked or open, the alarm system or device for the door has been turned off, the pool safety fence has been left open, your child does enter the water, the pool and personal immersion alarms fail or aren’t heard, the child panics and does not attempt to utilize survival swim training, and CPR is administered too late to save the child. 

Set down definite pool rules covering its use and more importantly, when it is not in use. We all have a tendency to give a little leeway on this or that with our children, but not when it comes to the pool. THERE CAN BE NO COMPROMISE ON POOL SAFETY. YOU ARE DEALING, LITERALLY, WITH A LIFE AND DEATH SITUATION.

Any door leading to the pool area should be kept locked.

Even if your home is equipped with an alarm system that will beep when perimeter doors are opened, install simple contact alarms on the more often used doors as a further safeguard. Pool Guard and Safety Turtle, for example, make excellent alarms designed strictly for access doors and gates to the pool area. Door and gate alarms must have the button (adult bypass switch) pushed whenever the door is opened. Door alarms require either a second bypass switch and or a 7 second delay to inhibit adult alarming in both directions. A door alarm is particularly useful if you have older children who open doors to the pool area. Sliding glass doors should be locked at the top in addition to other locks. In two thirds of the drowning cases studied where children were thought to be in the home, sliding glass doors were either left open or opened by the toddler.

NO DOGGY DOORS! THEY ARE ATTRACTIVE TO CHILDREN AND HAVE BEEN IMPLICATED IN DOZENS OF TODDLER DROWNINGS!

If you own a pool this is a must!

READ THE FULL POOL SAFETY GUIDE HERE: https://poolfence.com/pool-safety-guide/