Swimming Pool Risks Are Year-Round

Although swimming pools are always popular during the sweltering summer months, swimming pool risks are year-round, according to a risk management expert.

Bruce Lunning, technical director for liabilities, risk control, The St. Paul Companies in Minnesota, said swimming pools can be just as popular in the winter when people are driven indoors.

“It's a year-round exposure,” he said. “People like to use pools when they can't use the beaches. Even in the North, where it's cold, that actually drives people to indoor pools.”

To make swimming pools safe, The St. Paul recommends daily inspections of the pool facility and safety checks three times each day of the deck, pool and spa, sauna, recreational equipment, showers, locker rooms and rest rooms, and chemical storage areas.

Mr. Lunning said diving boards should only be present with proper depths of water.

“In an unsupervised poollike those in apartments and hotelswe would just as soon not see diving boards,” he said. His company looks for nine-to-10 feet of water beneath a diving board and 10 feet in front of the board.

Non-slip surfaces are also important. “Those are frequent claims. They're not usually expensive but they're frequent,” he said.

Slides can be a concern, especially those that may not be properly installed, he said. The depth of water and the angle of the slide should be checked.

Since water quality and a pool's sanitation system are of primary importance, the person in charge of those functions should keep quality records of the process, he said.

Rescue equipment should be close at hand. That includes shepherd's hooks, reaching poles, throwing buoys, and a nearby telephone for summoning help in case of an emergency, he said. First aid equipment should be on premises and its location should be identified.

Outdoor pools should be surrounded by barriers small children can't get through, such as wood or metal fences, with self-closing, self-latching gates, he added.

Mr. Lunning cautioned that proper drain coverage is important in pools that attract small children, such as wading pools or spas. Drains should be an anti-vortex or anti-entanglement design, so a child can't be held down to a drain or pulled down because of suction.

“Children like the feel of flowing water. So they will put their hands down to feel the water going down the drain,” he said. “If a drain cover is not in place, or if it is an improper drain with a strong vortex, a child can become caught and trapped.”

The company's risk control representatives are expected to make sure a pool's drain is an anti-vortex design “or a large enough drain that a child can't cover it.”

If a pool has a lifeguard, he or she should be a qualified lifeguard, he said. Current certifications should be on file showing that each lifeguard has passed a lifesaving course of some kind, including those offered by the Red Cross, YMCA and Boy Scouts of America. Certifications expire within three years and need to be renewed, Mr. Lunning said.

A trained lifeguard, he explained, is more than just a good swimmer. “They have to be trained to be looking for the distress signs that a person has before they start to drown.”

Lifeguard training also involves managing the environment so that a lifeguard knows “when to enforce the rules,” he said.

Not to be forgotten in the area of water safety, generally, are open water areas and coastal areas, “where you have concerns about tides and warnings to people to be concerned about rip currents,” he said. In these situations “you can't control the water quality and water may not be clear.”

Lifeguards are not a requirement, according to swimming pool codes, “as long as warnings are posted that a lifeguard is not present,” he said.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, August 5, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.

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Swimming Pool Risks Are Year-Round

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