Like most 2-year-olds, Loren Hinton loved to play hide-and-seek. On a warm spring day in May 2001, Loren ran around with her friends at her family's apartment community, while her father manned the grill. The little girl wandered into the community's pool area through a broken gate, took off her shoes, and slid down a kiddie slide into the pool's 6-foot-deep water. A neighbor rescued her, after finding her unconscious. The toddler survived the near-drowning but suffered irreversible brain damage.
It was an accident with both emotional and financial costs. Last year, a Florida jury awarded the Hinton family $100 million, finding the owner of the 26-unit apartment community negligent for not safeguarding the pool area and not repairing a gate that had been broken for months. (The company's attorney did not respond to a reporter's calls for comment.)
"Our child was able to get through that fence, and it nearly cost her her life," says Lorri Hinton, Loren's mother. Loren spent about a week on life support and six weeks in the hospital. "Her heart had stopped for 33 minutes," says Hinton. "It caused her to have severe brain damage. She's not the child she was before."
Tragically, these types of injuries happen more often than one might think. On average, 250 children under the age of 5 die annually as a result of pool drownings, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Among unintentional injuries, drowning is the second leading cause of death for children under age 5, after motor vehicle accidents. Given such statistics, apartment owners and managers can't afford to overlook the dangers pools can pose, particularly to their youngest residents.
Many of these heartbreaking incidents can be prevented with proper safety precautions. "Water safety is a big concern, and you can never take your focus off of it," says Lesa LaRocca, a regional director at Phoenix-based Trillium Residential LLC. "Kids love water; it looks so enticing. We have a responsibility as a management company to make sure that our facilities are working properly, especially our gates and fences."
But all too often, management is unaware of how to properly safeguard pools, says attorney Michael Haggard of Coral Gables, Fla.-based Haggard, Parks, Haggard & Bologna, who represented the Hintons in the case involving their daughter. "When I end up taking [apartment owners'] deposition or cross-examining them at trial, as much as they are negligent, they didn't want to be," the lawyer says. "They say, 'If I had just known what a self-latching gate was, I would have done that in a heartbeat.'"
To forestall such accidents at your properties, it pays to know the most common safety hazards at pools and how to reduce them. In many cases, the safer solution is easier than you might think–and could save you millions of dollars and countless regrets.
Hidden Danger: Pool Fences and Gates You've installed a 4-foot-tall or higher fence around your pool, with a top-of-the-line self-closing, self-latching gate, as required by many local jurisdictions. So you're all set, right? Think again. Gates can break, open gate doors can get stuck in cement, and residents can prop open gates with rocks, to name just a few possible scenarios. "Ninety-nine out of 100 times [in accidents], the pool gate was not closed," says Juliet Falevitch, spokesperson for the Phoenix Fire Department. In 2003, Phoenix had 61 pool-related injuries at community pools and home pools, with 11 fatalities.
Safer Solution: Do safety checks. "The one thing I would ask of them [apartment managers] is to check to make sure that the gates are secure and working properly," Hinton says. Your maintenance staff should check the pool at least once a day to ensure that the fencing is secure and the gate is working properly.
In addition to daily checks, Fogelman Management Group, a Memphis, Tenn.-based firm, does a quarterly inspection based on pool safety guidelines. "We review the pool site regularly to make sure that all policies and guidelines are being followed," says John Barger, Fogelman's director of real estate services. Plus most pools are within view of a property's leasing office so business managers can keep an eye out for safety hazards, such as gates propped open.
Since many jurisdictions don't require lifeguards at multifamily communities, experts stress the importance of having several layers of protection. In addition to a self-closing, self-latching gate, install a keyed entry, which runs only about $100, suggests Gerald Dworkin, an aquatics safety and water rescue consultant at Lifesaving Resources Inc. in Harrisville, N.H. Other safety precautions include no-diving signs displayed prominently around the pool in areas less than 9 feet deep, alarms on doors and windows leading to the pool area, lifelines separating the shallow from the deep end of the pool, and signs warning adults to supervise children at all times. Also, make sure there is a nearby telephone that dials 911 directly.
Hidden Danger: Unexpected Details You think you did your best to follow regulations set forth by the state or local jurisdiction. You're not positive you've met the standards, but you figure you did an adequate job. Then a child enters the pool by pushing the gate open.
Safer Solution: Get expert advice. When it comes to pool safety, details mean the difference between life and death. Your mistake: Codes require gates to swing outward rather than inward because it is easier for a child to push a gate than pull it open. Have a professional inspect your pool to ensure that your community is code-compliant. Groups like the American Red Cross, fire department, and police department will gladly inspect your properties for no fee.
Hidden Danger: Faulty Drains At the bottom of the pool, a drain cover is loose or missing. A resident puts his or her hand in the pipe and is trapped by the resulting suction. The CPSC has reported 73 cases of body entrapment, including 12 confirmed deaths, between January 1990 and October 2003.
Safer Solution: Inspect and upgrade drains. Make sure the drain cover is securely fastened to the bottom of the pool. (An antivortex cover is recommended.) As part of their daily survey of the pool area, maintenance workers should check the cover. If they can't tell whether the cover is fastened, they should turn the pump switch off–making very sure that it's off–jump in, and check the cover. It's essential that all maintenance personnel know the location of the emergency shut-off switch for the pool's pump.
Upgrades are another option. The National Swimming Pool Foundation recommends dual-drain systems. How-ever, a dual-drain retrofit can cost as much as $3,500. A less expensive alternative, costing between $500 and $1,500, is the Stingl Switch made by Stingl Products LLC, which shuts downs the pump and sounds alarms if the drain's vacuum increases. The company does recommend using additional safeguards.
Hidden Danger: Maintenance Equipment You've purchased the appropriate rescue safety equipment, such as a ring buoy to throw to a drowning victim, shepherd's hook, and first aid kit. You place them around the pool area, figuring they'll be easy to grab in an emergency. Then one afternoon, a boy falls into the water. His father searches frantically for a buoy but can't find it because it's buried in a heap of maintenance equipment.
Safer Solution: Keep gear separate. All safety equipment should be properly labeled and kept together in a separate area, away from maintenance poles and other non-emergency gear. "Nine out of ten times, I go into an apartment complex and the rescue pole is either above or below the maintenance pole, the skimmer, and the vacuum cleaner, which is absolutely ridiculous," says Dworkin of Lifesaving Resources. A resident doesn't know the difference between safety equipment and a maintenance device when they are all on the same wall, he says. If you have a diverse resident population, be sure to post all labels and signs in several languages.
Hidden Danger: Unusable Safety Gear If you've properly labeled all the rescue and safety equipment and grouped the items together, you may think you're ready to handle any emergency. But suppose two unsupervised children are running around the pool, and one falls into the deep end. The other child runs to the safety equipment and picks up the shepherd's hook but has no clue how to use it. His friend is left helpless.
Safer Solution: Educate your residents. Providing safety gear is only half the battle; equipment is meaningless if residents don't know how to use it. In 2003, the Arizona Multihousing Association (AMA) introduced Project S.A.F.E.–Safety and Awareness Family Education–to teach apartment residents about safety issues. The annual month-long program covers five topics, from disaster preparation and missing children to pool safety. The program is run by the AMA, the American Red Cross, and the Nation's Missing Children Organization and Center for Missing Adults.
"As you can imagine, out here there are just so many pools, and the number of drownings is very high in Arizona," says Wayne Kaplan, AMA's director of community relations, so the association decided to address these concerns. And from a liability point of view, offering pool safety courses is a good way to strengthen your defense that you have tried to deal with the issue before there was a problem, he adds.
This past April, American Red Cross instructors visited 48 properties throughout the Phoenix metro area, showing residents how to use safety devices and teaching children basic pool safety rules. More than 250 residents showed up at a water safety class at the Preserve Townhomes, a 360-unit community in Phoenix managed by Trillium. "So many families live at the Preserve, so we definitely wanted to do something special for that community," LaRocca says. The key is to make the events fun to encourage attendance, she adds. The event was coupled with a big barbeque party.
Hidden Danger: Uninformed Employees Residents aren't the only ones who can benefit from safety training. What happens if someone falls in the pool and the only one nearby is an employee?
Safer Solution: Require lifesaving training. To ensure that employees know how to respond to such situations, Calex Realty Group Inc., a Jacksonville, Fla.-based firm, requires that all maintenance supervisors and community managers take a pool safety and rescue course. The class consists of two hours of lecture and two hours of hands-on practice, with certified instructors demonstrating lifesaving techniques.
The training pays off. About two years ago, a 3-year-old boy was drowning, and his mother couldn't help him because she didn't know how to swim, says Michael Martin, executive director of human resource development at Calex. "One of our employees rescued him, giving him the gift of life," he says.
That's the best possible ending in what could have been a devastating situation. Unfortunately, it often takes calamities like the near-drowning of a child to spur public awareness of safety issues. After the Loren Hinton verdict, an owner of a condo complex in Deston, Fla., called Haggard, the Hintons' attorney, to see how he could safeguard his community.
"I told him, and he went and did it all," Haggard says. "He probably spent a couple of hundred dollars, and his insurance premiums probably dropped thousands of dollars." Most important, he's much less likely to have an accident.
Top Pool Rules New Code in Arizona Stirs Controversy Due to an increase in pool-related injuries and deaths, Maricopa County, Ariz., recently implemented stricter regulations for public swimming pools, which include those at multifamily communities. As of March, the code requires dual main drains, antivortex drain covers, and higher fences on all new pools. Property owners must retrofit existing pools with dual main drains the next time they resurface the pools or within 10 years, whichever comes first.
The Arizona Multihousing Association (AMA) supports the dual-drain requirement for new swimming pool and spa construction but lobbied against mandating retrofitted dual main drains, saying it doesn't make financial sense. "It's one of those mom-and-apple pie issues, where it's difficult to say you are coming out against safety, but the numbers and the economics just don't justify it," says Terry Feinberg, AMA's executive vice president.
There have been only three injuries, all non-fatal, due to drain entrapment in Maricopa County in the past two decades, Feinberg says. Yet upgrading to dual drains can cost as much as $3,500 per pool, not including costs of construction and water to refill the pool.
"On a cost-benefit basis, you just can't justify it," he says. "There are many more ways to ensure safety than having to spend that kind of money. But it's the law, and we will do it."
More cost-effective alternatives, Feinberg suggests, include replacing regular drain covers with antivortex ones and installing emergency shut-off switches that kill the pump. The AMA also encourages resident education, which is why the group introduced Project S.A.F.E. (Safety and Awareness Family Education).
The annual program trains apartment residents in pool safety.
"Education of the resident population and making sure that the gates work are probably the two greatest things that can be done toward pool safety," Feinberg says.