Child Drownings Can Be Stopped

About four years ago, The Times published a letter I wrote in response to the countless drownings and near-drownings being reported. And every year since then, I read of more children who have died, needlessly.

This summer, I can’t pick up the paper without learning of one more avoidable tragedy. And now, on a bright, beautiful, Sunday morning, I read the article by Scott Brown, the public information officer for the Orange County Fire Authority (“Orange County Voices,” Aug. 4).

Brown states that there are three basic reasons why children drown: the short time it takes for a child to drown; child drowning is a silent death; and a false sense of security.

There is only one basic reason why most children drown: because the parents made the decision to allow their children to live with this constant threat of death in the first place. The three Brown gives are the results of this decision.

He speaks of rules, regulations, plans, protection, preparation and supervision. What amazes me, what infuriates me, what absolutely mystifies me, was the omission of the most obvious solution: People who have non-swimming children in their care must forgo the luxury of pools and spas. No if’s, and’s or but’s about it.

These young children rely upon their parents’ decisions for their very lives. By deciding to live in a home with a pool, these adults have also made the decision to put their children’s lives in danger, just as surely as it they had left a loaded gun or an open bottle of poison within reach.

No matter how many precautions are taken, no matter how many fences are built, no matter how many people are walking around wearing Water Watcher badges, there is another child out there who will drown, not because the gate wasn’t closed, not because the parent thought the child was asleep, not because the alarm was turned off by the pool man, but because the parents made the decision to allow their children to live with this constant threat of death in the first place. Their children deserve to live in the safest environment possible; their children deserve the chance to reach an age where they too can wake up on a bright, beautiful, Sunday morning and read a newspaper, hopefully a newspaper devoid of stories of these senseless tragedies.

JAN BLACK

Tustin