Las Vegas Sun

March 19, 2024

Pool and water safety urged as heat wave continues

pool safety

Mick Akers

Marissa Endy-Vanchieri gets emotional while describing the day she found her daughter, Lily, right, submerged in their backyard pool. She spoke during an event at Sunrise Children’s Hospital on June 21, 2017, highlighting the importance of pool safety.

It only takes a second.

That’s what parents of children involved in swimming pool-related incidents want to relay to other parents and those who care for children around water.

There have been 28 submersion incidents involving children younger than 14 years old reported to the Southern Nevada Health District this year. The first drowning occurred Tuesday when a 14-year-old boy was discovered unresponsive and not breathing in a central valley pool.

Sixty-three percent of the incidents were in public pools, up from 2016, when 28 percent of submersion incidents occurred in a public setting. There were 50 submersion incidents involving those younger than 14 in 2016, nine of them drownings.

Most drownings and submersions are preventable, making awareness and education crucial, a doctor said during a news conference at Sunrise Children's Hospital on Wednesday.

“Time is of the essence,” said Dr. Harry Zilberman, a pediatrician at Sunrise. “It’s most effective to notice that the child is drowning and to intervene at that point.”

Zilberman recommended to immediately start mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and chest compressions if necessary after finding a child was submerged under water.

Even if a child doesn’t drown, the effects of nearly downing could be a life-altering event.

“Brain damage and loss of functionality in their lungs are a few of the many effects,” Zilberman said. “A quick response is really important because any significant delays could result in brain injury and injury to other body organs.”

An estimated 20 percent of hospitalized nonfatal drowning victims suffer severe, permanent neurologic disability, according to the Southern Nevada Health District.

Cierra Sonetti, a registered nurse, knows this all too well: Her son died of complications caused by nearly drowning years earlier.

Sonetti’s son, Austin, was just 18 months old on April 2005, when his life was changed in an instant at a family function.

After Sonetti would not let Austin go outside at the gathering, his stepmother took him outside where three adults were present, so she assumed he was safe.

“She (stepmother) took him outside around 5:30 p.m. and at 6 p.m. everyone came back in, but Austin didn’t come back in,” Sonetti said. “We began frantically searching for him … he had fallen under the pool cover.”

Austin was thought to be under the pool cover for 3-6 minutes, according to Sonetti.

“He survived, but he was severely neurologically devastated,” she said. “It was the last time he was able to voluntarily hug me and suck his thumb and say, ‘I love you.’”

After a lengthy hospital stay, he was confined to a wheelchair and used a breathing tube. Over the next nine years Austin fought various health issues such as pneumonia, infections and broken bones.

Austin lived nine months in a hospice and died in May 2014.

Sonetti would go on to work at Sunrise Children’s Hospital and came full circle in February when she treated a toddler who was found submerged by her mother.

Marisa Endy-Vanchieri discovered her toddler daughter, Lily, floating in their home pool after leaving her child alone for a brief moment as she got ready for work.

“She must have went out the dog door,” Endy-Vanchieri said. “I ran to the sliding-glass door, saw her body submerged and thought, ‘God, please don’t let her be dead.”

Endy-Vanchieri pulled Lily from the water. She was taken to Sunrise Children's Hospital, treated and released without any side effects from being submerged.

“It happens quickly,” she said. “You take your eyes off them for two seconds, and they're gone.”

Zilberman emphasized that all parents should incorporate the ABCDs of pool safety:

• Adult supervision. Be within an arm's length of your child when possible.

• Barriers, with self-locking fences.

• CPR. Know how to administer it.

• Devices, such as flotation devices, particularly while boating.

Zilberman said that swimming lessons are helpful, but they can also create a false sense of security.

“Even children who have had swimming classes have drowned,” he said. “Their ability to understand different concepts of swimming, especially for younger children, is difficult. That does not replace constant supervision by parents.”

Sonetti urges all parents to treat every day the same, as you never know when a submersion event might take place.

“Any day is a perfect day for a drowning,” Sonetti said. “Any day, any time, it doesn’t matter. You need to be vigilant, you need to watch your children because they’re doing what they need to be doing, being curious … at the end of the day, we’re letting our children down.”