![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What, me responsible?
Jul. 14th, 2007 07:54 amMother blames Great America park for death of her 4-year-old son in 2 feet of water in wave pool
This is a sad event, and I feel bad for the family and for the Great America staff, but a few comments by the mother made me rather annoyed.
Flores disputed key elements of the park's account of how the tragedy unfolded Thursday at the Great Barrier Reef wave pool, an expanse of churning water about half the size of a football field, where she had let the 4-year-old boy, Carlos Alejandro Flores, play unattended.
She let a four-year old into a wave pool unattended. Where was she?
"That's a lie that there were six," Flores said. "There's four lifeguards there. How can they not see my son? There's three walking and one sitting. They weren't doing their job. He was in 2 feet of water. How could he drown?
You can drown in six inches of water.
Flores said she had not been in the pool with her son at the time and does not know how he drowned. The 4-year-old had been in the water earlier, got out to eat some chips and went back in, she said.
When he didn't return within 10 minutes, she said, she became concerned and told her daughter to find him. After Jasmine told her mother she couldn't see the boy, both started toward the pool, where Jasmine ultimately found him underwater, Flores said. The girl's screams attracted the lifeguards' attention, she said.
Four years old, and she lets him go unattended into a crowded wave pool with no flotation device (freely available from the park), no direct supervision, and doesn't even keep an eye on him.
This woman seems to think that entering a theme park removes her responsibility to supervise her children.
Parents have to "be vigilant all the time" with children in pools, said Sue Sherman, a spokeswoman for Lifesaving Society, a Canadian water safety group.
"That includes lifeguarded circumstances," Sherman said. "The lifeguard is your safety net. The first person that's responsible is the adult that takes those children to the pool."
Damn right.
This is a sad event, and I feel bad for the family and for the Great America staff, but a few comments by the mother made me rather annoyed.
Flores disputed key elements of the park's account of how the tragedy unfolded Thursday at the Great Barrier Reef wave pool, an expanse of churning water about half the size of a football field, where she had let the 4-year-old boy, Carlos Alejandro Flores, play unattended.
She let a four-year old into a wave pool unattended. Where was she?
"That's a lie that there were six," Flores said. "There's four lifeguards there. How can they not see my son? There's three walking and one sitting. They weren't doing their job. He was in 2 feet of water. How could he drown?
You can drown in six inches of water.
Flores said she had not been in the pool with her son at the time and does not know how he drowned. The 4-year-old had been in the water earlier, got out to eat some chips and went back in, she said.
When he didn't return within 10 minutes, she said, she became concerned and told her daughter to find him. After Jasmine told her mother she couldn't see the boy, both started toward the pool, where Jasmine ultimately found him underwater, Flores said. The girl's screams attracted the lifeguards' attention, she said.
Four years old, and she lets him go unattended into a crowded wave pool with no flotation device (freely available from the park), no direct supervision, and doesn't even keep an eye on him.
This woman seems to think that entering a theme park removes her responsibility to supervise her children.
Parents have to "be vigilant all the time" with children in pools, said Sue Sherman, a spokeswoman for Lifesaving Society, a Canadian water safety group.
"That includes lifeguarded circumstances," Sherman said. "The lifeguard is your safety net. The first person that's responsible is the adult that takes those children to the pool."
Damn right.
