Media Articles and Coverage

Walking On Water - Silent danger lurks in the backyard but a few simple steps can help keep children safe
By KIM HONEY, Toronto Star, July 20, 2006.

Sheri Warner took a key down from a hook inside the kitchen and walked through the sliding glass doors leading from their luxurious kitchen to the deck overlooking the pool she and her husband Brian put in three years ago.

The Warners were in the middle of a pool party for son Nick's hockey team and adults lounged on the expansive wooden deck outside their well-appointed Mississauga home while the water churned with kids of various shapes and sizes.

Warner walked to the opposite side of the pool near the wooden fence and ordered everyone out of the water. She slid the key into a lock and turned it. A low hum emanated from the housing below the deck as the automatic safety cover rolled silently across the 20-foot by 40-foot pool on tracks bolted into the poured concrete.

Within a minute, the pool was covered with a blue vinyl tarp. When 9-year-old Katie got within arm's reach, mother pushed daughter backward into the pool. Katie yelled as she fell on the cover, but got up and made her way over to the deck with big, wobbly steps. “Can I do it again?” she called out. “That was fun!”

Though Katie says it was like walking in a bouncy house, the cover is not designed for amusement purposes. These safety covers are meant to keep children from drowning in private pools. And in Indiana, where Warner comes from, they are extremely common. Some municipalities even allow you to forgo the fence if you have a cover, but here they are extremely rare. Warner had to call several companies before she found one, Pioneer Family Pools in Oakville, that would even attempt to put one in and that was after importing an installer from Windsor, Ont.

“My neighbours tease me and call me Safety Sheri,” Warner says, laughing. But she's serious about spreading the word about safety covers and has even offered her place as a demo should anyone want to install one.

“If one person is aware of this and opts for it, then it's worth it.”

Warner, a former competitive swimmer who was a lifeguard at the University of Notre Dame, knows the dangers that lurk in the backyard pool. That's why she makes sure she closes the pool whenever the kids come in the house, particularly at meal times, “because that's when people let their guard down.”

Warner knows there is no substitute for supervision, but she considers the automatic safety cover another layer of protection.

With a price tag of $10,000 or more, the automatic pool cover certainly falls in the high-end category in the pool safety industry, says Bryan Paul, a sales representative with Pioneer. There are other companies out there who sell them, but the cost coupled with the short swimming season means it's not exactly a moneymaker.

“It's the only one we've ever done,” Paul says if the Warner home.

Eight people drowned in Ontario's 260,000 private pools in 2001, according to the most recent figures from the Lifesaving Society, down from a high of 16 in 1998. About two-thirds of those are under the age of 5 and they are statistically the most at risk, says society spokesman Ed Bean.

The most recent drowning occurred June 16 when a Filipina nanny and her 2-year-old charge were found at the bottom of a backyard pool in Richmond Hill. They were playing in the shallow end when one or the other got into trouble.

“I think it's a terribly unnecessary tragedy but it is an example of how it can happen,“ says Bean, who stresses that drowning is both fast and silent. “Those two combined lead the Lifesaving Society to say you've got to be within arm's reach.”

The society is the one that touts “layers of protection,” the most important being a physical barrier between water and people, such as an automatic cover or a fence with four sides and a self-latching gate. And though most municipal bylaws require a fence, Bean says most allow the wall of the house to form the fourth side.

“The weakest point has got to be access through the back door,” he says. “When you consider most drownings happen with people who live in the house or who are visiting the house, then the fourth wall becomes important.”

When Streetsville residents Chris and Joyce King bought a house seven years ago and decided to put in a pool, they had two children under the age of five. They researched pool safety and decided on a removable, modular fence called ProtectA Child, but when there was no distributor in Ontario, they offered to sell them here.

“I wanted the fence because to me pool alarms and sensors are after the fact. The children are already in the water (when they go off),” says Chris King.

Although King is a renovator, during the summer he does nothing but install the fences, which cost $2,200 and up. This summer their business, Protect AChild Ontario, will put in about 150 of them. “It's all we can do to keep up,” he says.

The problem with the pool fences is many people don't like the aesthetics. The mesh fences are either black or white and interrupt the yard's sight lines.

It happened 13 years ago, but every moment of that day is indelibly imprinted on the memory of former Canadian world champion figure skater Barbara Underhill. The house in Mississauga was abuzz with preparations for the christening of her 8-month-old twin girls, Stephanie and Samantha. Husband Rick Gaetz was in the playroom with the girls when Barbara decided to go out to the pool area, which was surrounded by a big, black iron fence with a gate, to do some gardening.

Somehow Stephanie, who had not even begun to crawl, got out the screen door undetected, pulled herself 15 metres across the patio, went up a step and through the gate to the pool. Underhill had left the gate open while she went around to the front of the house with the wheelbarrow. Her father found her minutes later and was unable to revive the infant.

“I tell this story because if an 8-month-old baby can do this, imagine how easy it is for a toddler or older child to get out the door,” says Underhill, who, with Gaetz, started the Stephanie Gaetz Keepsafe Foundation to educate children about safety.

That's why they recommend a four-sided fence, though they don't endorse other products.

“My concern with any of the products is that some people get too comfortable with them,” Underhill says. “There needs to be layers of protection as opposed to one thing. I just think if you have layers of protection, if one thing failed you have something else to back it up.“

Ottawa entrepreneur Bob Lyons agrees there's no substitute for a four-sided fence with a self-locking gate, but he sees his invention, called the Safety Turtle, as a last layer of protection that complements fences, pool covers and water sensors.

“You're targeting the very young child who is mobile,” says Lyons, president of Terrapin Communications Inc., which won a $10,000 Manning Innovation Award for the Safety Turtle in 2004. “It redefines the problem. The problem is with the kid, not the water.”

Lyons has a patent on the Safety Turtle's electronic water sensor, which is attached to the child's wrist and sends a signal to a base unit using radio frequencies when it is immersed in water. It worked when ConsumersReports.org tested it, but the down side is that an adult has to remember to put it on a child.

“It's like a seatbelt,” says Lyons. “If you get into that space, it's very effective. If you don't ... it's not.”

He doesn't recommend door alarms that beep when you open them since people can get habituated to the sound and won't react when they hear it. A fence with a self-latching gate isn't foolproof either, he says, since one can forget to shut it.

That's why he invented an electronic gate alarm that works with the same base as the Safety Turtle. It has a loud alarm that sounds inside the house with an average distance of 60 metres. It also has an adult bypass system that gives you 11 seconds to get into the pool without the alarm going off.

None of these things is a substitute for supervision, Lyons points out. He also notes that, for some kids, even supervision is not enough.

As for the Lifesaving Society's motto “within arm's reach,” Lyons is skeptical. At a trade show one mom told him her daughter drowned at a Canada Day pool party for 80 people. Another woman told him her 2-year-old died while she was entertaining 15 people poolside.

“Kids have drowned within arm's reach,” he says, pointedly. “It's all about eye contact. It's more about eye contact than proximity.”

“No one individual is God in this instance.”

Automatic safety covers: They can be installed on an existing pool or built into the deck. A reinforced vinyl cover is attached to an aluminum bar that is drawn across the pool on a track at the turn of a key. Mounted on top of the deck, they cost between $8,000 and $12,000, says Ed Gibbs, owner of Gib-San Pools Ltd. in Toronto. Mounted under the deck, they're worth $22,000 and up.

Safety Turtle: Electronic water sensor uses radio frequencies to sound alarm when turtle wristband is immersed in water. Portable system allows other people to use pool. Safety Turtle System $199.99 at canadiantire.ca or safetyturtle.com, $69.99 for additional wristbands.

Safety Turtle gate alarm: Works with the same base as Safety Turtle. Goes off if a child manages to open the gate, if the gate fails to latch within 11 seconds or if a child wearing a Safety Turtle falls in the water. Expected August 2006, suggested retail price $149.

Pool sensors: There are several brands, which measure water displacement. They're supposed to sound an alarm at pool side and inside the house within 20 seconds if anything heavier than 15 to 18 pounds falls in the pool, but this year ConsumersReports.org and the CTV show On Your Side tested four of them and found only one, PoolGuard PGRM2, was acceptable. Poolguard, $175 online at onlinepoolsupply.net.

Removable pool fence: ProtectAChild fences features non-conductible fiberglass poles drilled every three feet around the pool and filled with interwoven fine mesh with a PVC coating. The gate has a point lock designed to foil small hands. $26.50 to $28.50 and up per linear foot installed. Available at protectachild.com.

Life jacket or water wings: Lifesaving Society spokesman Ed Bean said the jury is still out on whether to recommend lifejackets at poolside, but most people use them anyway. When the right size is worn properly, personal flotation devices keep small kids at the surface, right side up. $40 to $60, canadiantire.ca.

Noodle: Bean recommends the ubiquitous foam noodles, lots of them, since they can be a lifeline for a drowning victim and can help support someone who jumps in to save a swimmer in trouble.

— Kim Honey

Copyright © Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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