If there was only one pipe or doesn’t really matter if there is a screen or not. If the pipe had a cover she would have still been stuck on the bottom and no one likely would have been able to get her out of the water. If a second pipe had been there the pressure wouldn’t have built up enough to suck her in.
This is a solved engineering problem, they have screens that are shaped such that a person can’t cover it.
Elsewhere I read the pump actually did have an entrapment system engaged and shut off, but by the time she blocked the pipe and sensors detected the obstruction, she was already wedged 20 feet into the pipe.
In other words, if this had a simple grate and she blocked it with her body, the pump would’ve shut off almost immediately.
The other problem is this hole was supposed to be an outlet, not an inlet. But the pump was reversed for whatever reason.
I work in the pool industry. From my understanding, she was sucked into a water return so there isn’t regulation requiring a cover
It’s like being sucked into the end of a fire hose, there isn’t a cover because it’s supposed to pushing water out so a cover wouldn’t help
If I remember right, the pool was recently renovated so I believe they plumbed it backwards. So the water was returning through a screen
