Note: The Watchdog has been in charge of operating over a dozen pools for up to 45 years. That is about 600 seasons. No person has ever drowned or been serious injured at any of the pools! The reason is good practices.
In one morning we read how a two-year old drowned at the Sweetbriar Apartments ‘ pool, despite others being present. And the second account of a near drowning with life long implications for the child at a public Manheim Township pool:
Here is an excerpt from the Intelligencer Journal:
“Teen lifeguard saved child’s life at Skyline pool
“A 16-year-old lifeguard is credited with rescuing a child Friday afternoon at Skyline Park Pool in Manheim Township.
“The guard was on duty at the children’s pool at Skyline, 245 Eden Road, when she noticed a 3-year-old Manheim Township girl in the water who was not breathing, township police Sgt. Tom Rudzinski said.
“According to a witness, the child was limp and blue-faced when pulled from the water.
“The unconscious child began breathing on her own, Rudzinski said, before being transported to the hospital.
“’They’re all well-trained guards, and they did their jobs,’ Becky Slick, programs manager for the township, said.”
Bull s—! Becky Slick and the life guard should be discharged. The whole point of guarding is preventing children from getting into dangerous situation. Their parents are to be admonished to watch them. The guard should blow the whistle and summon assistance as soon as the child is in a potentially dangerous situations, such as a two-year old approaching the side of a pool without an adult supervising.
Good guarding rarely requires the guard to jump into the pool. They are to sit on a raised life guard chair with whistle handy. No one should ever be allowed in a pool without the guard being in that chair and concentrating on what is taking place. If the guard needs to take a break and is working alone, the pool must be unoccupied for the duration.
NewsLanc calls on the Lancaster Newspapers, township Officials and county and state authorities to investigate these two outrages. Manheim Township officials, where both tragedies occurred, need to review guarding standards at Skyline Park Pool. Skyline should be closed until it is clear that proper policies are in effect and guards retrained and possibly supplemented.
The apartment complex, if indeed operating within the law (which has to do with the size of the pool), should consider providing guard service. The Watchdog (www.TheManorGroup.com) would never operate an apartment complex pool without Red Cross certified life guards, and posted rules and regulations.
Furthermore, the Lancaster Newspapers should investigate both occurances and report on them impartially.
Safety is everyone’s most important job!
Couldn’t agree with you more. The Lancaster Newspaper story suggested the lifeguard where the young girl who was pulled, while blue and unconscious, did a great job. Actually, there was nothing about that incident that suggested a job well done.
This child must have been underwater for several minutes. Such an incident could not have happened if the lifeguards were, in fact, well trained and doing their jobs. The management at Skyline clearly does not have a handle on good guarding practices.
So, how is it that a small child in a small enclosed area surrounded by adults enters the water in a pool without being held or at least with water wings? How is it that there are critical minutes that a child – that cannot swim – disappears from a supervising adult without regard to thier whereabouts? So, perhaps a parent was not there.
Perhaps a supervising adult was too busy talking about some deep topic, indulging in the conversation of adults for a brief child-free moment.
But that is not how I parent and I never did. The burning question fills my head, “where was the mother?” “where was the father?” “where was one committed loving parent?!” Skyline pool – as difficult as it is to imagine such a situation, if I were that lifeguard, I would have stood up, blew my whistle, shouted for assistance, and before my statement had fully escaped my mouth, I would have DIVED INTO THE POOL FROM THE CHAIR!
Certainly before that, I would have noticed the amble wanderings of a child too young and too short for a pool that deep. The child should never have entered, jumped, or fallen, into the water at all!
Children should be wrist banded at least with thier swimming ability so that guards know before they enter an area whether they can even be in that area.
It seems that the first line of defense to protect a child failed. They were unsupervised in a deep water area. The second line of defense failed. The lifeguard failed to noticed the child fall or jump into the water unsupervised. The third line of defense failed – the lifeguard took too long to notice them and too long to gently climb down from the chair and tread water.
Sweetbriar, No lifeguard at a pool is unacceptable. Better to fill the pool in with dirt than suffer the loss of another innocent small life.
Train our lifeguards to act with a sense of urgency, work faster, stop talking, and multiply the number of qualified staff. Speed of response is mission critial. Should be drive the ambulence at the speed limit too? Or perhaps take the scenic route on the way to the E.R.?
Overall, it is harder to identify a drowning is occurring than to prevent it in the first place. Afterall, a drowning child may look like a small child trying to swim or even playing before it is too late. It is far better to keep them out of an area that they don’t belong in to begin with.
What is an tragedy is the fact that people are on here taking smack about a situation that they don’t fully know or understand. Everything was done correctly at Skyline Pool. The people posting on here have no clue of the actual events that occurred at Skyline.
It is true that through the Red Cross certification lifeguard are trained to use preventative lifeguarding techniques. I know this because I am a current employee of Skyline. So before any of you think you know what happened or choose to tell us how to perform our jobs maybe you should get your facts straight.
First of all, the 3 year old girl is fine. There are absolutely no long term, life altering complications from the accident. She will be a healthy child and plans on returning to the pool as soon as the doctors say its safe to return to the water.
Second of all, what gives you the right to attack a young 16 year old lifeguard, because by your standards she didn’t do her job properly. She is a bright young lady who saved a young girls life. If YOU think you could do the job better, maybe you should take the rigorous Red Cross lifeguarding course and apply for a job. She recognized the girl was in trouble, got down from her stand, and removed the girl from the water in a timely and safe manner. Without her, the girl would have suffered some of these “ife long implications”.
Maybe you should check your facts before you judge the young men and women who have taken the responsibility of watching and protecting the children of Lancaster. As you can see, the lifeguards at Skyline did the job they were set out to do. The life of a young woman was saved, more than can be said for the unfortunate situation that occurred just up the road at Sweetbrier Apartments
NewsLanc, by insisting that the lifeguard failed to do her job, you obviously failed to do yours as you have published a story riddled with incorrect statements and misleading remarks. The girl received a clear bill of health and is in no way at risk of any “life long implications”.
Secondly, you state that Skyline guards were poorly prepared and must be retrained, without mentioning that all Township lifeguards are required to complete the American Red Cross Lifeguard Training course, attend mandatory in-service trainings every Monday of summer to review skills, be ready to respond to multiple full-scale drills throughout the summer during operational hours, have been trained in advanced scanning techniques based off research from Penn State University, and re-certify every summer on oxygen, AED, and CPR skills through the Red Cross. Do not suggest that these professional responders are not prepared without mentioning this advanced training that each receives.
Thirdly, you state that if small children approach the pool without parental supervision, its as dangerous situation, which is absolutely true. Skyline is 100% a family oriented pool, and there is always the inherit danger of parents looking away from their children.
As for the remarks from other readers, a small child can lose consciousness within a minute of slipping underwater. Also, the guard certainly did not “gently climb down the chair and tread water”. American Red Cross emphasizes the importance of putting the safety of other patrons before the victim. Seeing as it was a crowded summer day, jumping off the stand would not save time and simply endanger more patrons (lifeguards would use jumps with safety tubes into the water, so if we followed the techniques of other readers that thought they could respond much better and “DOVE INTO THE POOL FROM THE STAND”, the guard and other patrons would have spinal injuries and the victim would have drowned, obviously not a better scenario) Furthermore, the guard raced down the stairs, pulled the victim from the water and immediately initiated care. Scenic ambulance metaphors might sound nice, but the guards responded with haste and saved a life, just as they were trained to do.
Finally, NewsLanc applauds Watchdog pools for their clear record with “no serious injuries of drownings”, and yet Skyline Pool has this same record. According to you, good guarding rarely involves a guard entering the water. Well, in this case, it did. As for calling it an “outrage” when a teenager gives a family the future of their daughter, LancNews truly failed to conduct proper jounalism. Good guarding may rarely involve entering the water, but good journalism always involves presenting the facts, and LancNews utterly fails to do so in this story.
I’m a trained lifeguard with 3 full years of experience at several different pools.
This situation could happen to any of the lifeguards working, the pool is a large area and you can’t watch the entire thing at once even when there is several guards on one pool.
The young girl may have been underwater less than 30 seconds because children are more likely to get confused and breathe in the water once they are deeper than where they can stand. Once a person breathes in water, they either cough it up or continue breathing in water out of panic and they will pass out in a matter of seconds.
The lifeguards did what they are supposed to do, and to be critical is not fair to the circumstances of the event. Even with extensive training and experience do you have 3 sets of eyes? I didn’t think so.
Why don’t you do some better research and talk to people who are lifeguards and train lifeguards rather than drawing your own conclusions based on faulty information.
WATCHDOG’S RESPONSE: If indeed circumstances requjire “3 sets of eyes”, then there needs to be more lifeguards. On busy days at the fourteen pools we manage, we not only have a guard in the chair but one sitting at the other end of the pool.
The Intelligencer Journal / New Era reports describes a far more serious event than what is suggested above. “May have been under water less than 30 seconds” seems unlikely, especially since an ambulance was summoned.
The ambulance was summoned at the request of the family and guards to check the child over.