MONTREAL – When they sign school, camp or daycare field-trip consent forms, many parents assume their children will be well-monitored on the outing. Think again, says a Quebec coroner who investigated the drowning death last summer of a nine-year-old boy who went to a water park with his school.
Jeremy Mulumba’s body was found at the bottom of the wave pool at the Mont St. Sauveur water park northwest of Montreal, an hour after teachers realized he was missing. The boy had likely been knocked over by a wave and pulled under the water, said coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier.
"When I read the statements that the children, and the teachers and the lifeguards gave to the police, I thought, ‘My God, everyone was improvising,’ " she said in an interview. "No one really knew how to react."
Rudel-Tessier’s report on Jeremy’s death – made public just as the summer swimming season began – repeats many recommendations that Quebec coroners have made before to try to prevent drownings.
Rudel-Tessier, who has investigated two other child drowning deaths in Quebec, said Jeremy’s death was preventable. The adults accompanying the children didn’t know who could swim and who could not and they didn’t do regular head counts to make sure all the children were accounted for.
There were three lifeguards on duty when there should have been at least four, and they couldn’t see the entire area of the wave pool they were supposed to be supervising, Rudel-Tessier said. The lifeguards didn’t turn off the wave mechanism in the pool when told a child was missing, and when they finally did see something at the bottom of the pool, the first lifeguard to dive into the water left the boy in the pool and had to be told by another water park employee to go back and get him out.
"It’s disturbing, because everyone knew a child was missing, but they didn’t turn off the waves and they didn’t take any action except to look a little bit here and there," Rudel-Tessier said. "There absolutely must be policies in place to ensure the safety of children."
Since 2000, six children in Quebec have drowned at public pools, beaches or water parks while on trips organized by schools, day camps or daycares. In that same period, another child drowned at a swimming lesson at a municipal pool, and a mentally handicapped 21-year-old man drowned during an outing to a municipal pool with his group home.
The coroners investigating those deaths ruled that five of the eight could have been prevented. Most of the children didn’t know how to swim, and the people supervising them didn’t know what the child’s swimming ability was. In some cases there weren’t enough lifeguards, in other cases, not enough camp counsellors or teachers to adequately supervise the children.
Several of the recommendations that Rudel-Tessier made after Mulumba’s death have already been made by other coroners into previous child drownings.
They include: making sure there are enough lifeguards on duty, creating an emergency plan to deal with a suspected drowning, assessing a child’s swimming ability before they enter the water and using the "buddy system" of pairing children up while on an outing. Schools, day camps and daycares should have emergency plans that they have practised with the children before they get to the site.
Three times since 2006 Quebec coroners have recommended that the provincial Education Department introduce a mandatory swimming program for children to take before Grade 2. Only half of Canadian children take swimming lessons, says the Lifesaving Society, a national organization that works to promote water safety.
In Ontario, children in Grade Three can take the Lifesaving Society’s Swim to Survive program, where they learn how to deal with an unexpected fall into the water. At the end of three lessons, they will know how to tread water for one minute, roll over in deep water and swim 50 metres.
Last winter Quebec’s Education Ministry and the Lifesaving Society teamed up to run pilot projects of the Swim to Survive program in Montreal, Quebec City and Trois-Rivieres. An Education Ministry spokesperson said it is now evaluating the pilot projects.
Such training might have prevented Mulumba’s death, the Lifesaving Society’s Francois Lepine said.
In her report, Rudel-Tessier pointed out that wave pools pose different risks than regular swimming pools. The waves can create a backlash effect that can surprise swimmers, which is probably what happened with Jeremy, she said. The movement of the waves and the sun reflecting on the water make it difficult to see to the bottom of the pool, she said.
At least seven people have drowned at wave pools in North America since 2005.
Rudel-Tessier recommended that lifeguards working at the Mont St. Sauveur wave pool take specialized training offered by the Lifesaving Society for wave-pool lifeguarding.
The water park said it had an emergency plan in place last June, but could not explain why no one turned off the wave machine when lifeguards were informed that a boy was missing.
The agency that oversees wave pools in Quebec, ordered the Mont St. Sauveur water park to increase the number of lifeguards at the wave pool and to make life-jackets mandatory for children 12 and under. The agency is also reviewing the provincial regulations for public pools, which dates from the 1980s, to include specific rules for wave pools, water slides and other water activities, a spokesman said.
Parents, schools, day camps and other groups that organize aquatic activities for children can also do more to ensure children’s safety, Rudel-Tessier said.
Parents have an important role to play in reminding children about the rules for field trips that include water-based activities, she said. They have to question the school, camp or daycare about how they prepared for the trip and how many lifeguards will be on duty. They also have to know their child’s swimming ability.
Institutions that want to include aquatic activities for children should follow a guide that was created in 2006 by the Education Ministry, the Red Cross, the Lifesaving Society and the Quebec Camps Association, Rudel-Tessier said.
Nearly 2,000 day-camp counsellors in Quebec have received specialized training this summer based on that guide, said the Lifesaving Society’s Lepine. A few schools and school boards have also taken the training, he added.
"Taking kids on a water-based outing is not the same as taking them to the park for a picnic," Rudel-Tessier said. "It has to be very structured, with very strict rules for the children to respect."
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