Regardless of whether or not the parents were around the ability for a body to be forcibly pulled into the machinery is an obvious failure in operating a safe pool.
It’s a failure on a number of levels, failure to maintain a safe pool, AND failure to maintain a safe working environment.
And honestly the employee refusing to review security footage until the police showed up when a child was missing with the fuck?
The kind of employee that asks “is this right for the company” before doing anything.
Yeah maybe but it could also be someone desparate in a shitty low pay job who is afraid of getting fired. Just saying, not enough info
This has been a known problem for decades. I remember watching videos about it on Discovery channel back when they still ran education content. One case, a person had their intestines sucked out.
The solution has always been to have multiple intakes for the suction line and have the kill switch in clear view of the pool.
Newer pools have the water intake all around the pool rather than a suction valve at the bottom/side.
And there this excellent short story!
You can say that again. Growing up in Florida, I’ve been in a lot of swimming pools and water parks, and I have never seen anything like what is shown in the video attached to this article. That opening is huge. user224’s link says the pipe is 30cm (almost a foot) in diameter. Even in giant public pools I’ve been in, I can’t recall seeing an opening or fixture that size. That, coupled with a lack of any cover on it, seems so obviously dangerous. God, what an awful way to go.
Seems like litigation is still ongoing but most recent articles I’ve read state that pump was either recently repaired or replaced, and flow was in the wrong direction. If it was outflow, nobody could swim in there if they wanted to (but if it was off, a small child still could, so a grate still should’ve been on there). They suspect hole was installed later to probably align with flow requirements for the new pump.
My submechaniphobia is at an 11 right now, and this further confirms for me that’s it’s not really a phobia but a real legit fear.
I found more info here (news.com.au).
Also shows image of the pipe and:
“[It] appears right now the pump was put in there, and it was probably malfunctioning because of the open pipe that she ended up in was supposed to be pushing water out.”
Fuck sake that was a hard read. That poor mother. I can’t even comprehend the purpose of that pipe. They describe it as a lazy river so I’m assuming it’s some sort of equalizer pipe to the other side. Water flows in one direction around the pool and I think what they’re saying is the flow of the river was reversed for whatever reason. There would be quite a strong amount of suction through there, even if it wasn’t a direct intake line to the pump.
Edit: oh this is old news, months old. Looks like it was indeed an outlet:
“Her poor little body was contorted when she was sucked into this hole and pipe 20 feet back. Her body was inside of the motor when she had to be extracted," he said. "They had to break up concrete in order to extract her, cut pipe. It was absolutely horrific.”
Pump’s flow was reversed for whatever reason.
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.
That poor child… And those poor ems workers who had to dig out her little body…
I tagged along with my wife for a pool day at her friend’s house with our kids. I was swimming along near the wall of the pool when my foot was violently pulled into the vaccuum line. Really spooked me. It’s code for those suction lines to have a spring-loaded cover. This one didn’t. I luckily freed my foot and went to check the valves on the pump. All suction was routed to the vacuum line, none to skimmer.
Some expensive pumps have an anti-entrapment system but most do not.
I warned her to get that shit fixed ASAP…
For commercial pools of this scale, there’s just no chance to resist.
I own a pool now and I take all that shit very seriously. You don’t mess around with water.
Sorry, what the fuck. This is a complete failure on engineering controls and safety. A safety analysis on an industrial plant would find something like this to be a major safety vulnerability that needs several redundant safeguards.
Jesus fucking Christ.
We should really change that. Things would be so much safer if we applied this level of scrutiny for anything considering the public.
I work as a pool maintenance technician in Texas. There are laws that are pretty strict for public pools for anti-entrapment drains
From what I’ve been able to read and from what I’ve read from interviews, the pipe was like 6" wide and didn’t have a cover. I believe it was a wall return that she was sucked into. But it was plumbed backwards and so it was pulling water instead of pushing
I work with multiple river pumps and they’re frequently the biggest pumps in the pump room. So the water they return is at a pretty high flow rate and none of them have a cover on the pressure side. The ones I work with have multiple openings of an inch or two
But the main reason this happened was someone fucked up with plumbing the pump and used the discharge side for the pressure side. No idea how someone wouldn’t notice
I think I read that they didn’t disclose that they were renovating and adding a river. No idea why it wasn’t looked at either. So, so, so many levels of failure lead to this
Dunno if it changes anything, but user224 posted this link elsewhere in this discussion, and it says the pipe was 30cm (almost a foot) in diameter – I’m no expert, but the photos in this and OP’s article seem to show an opening about that size to me. I only mention it because that seemed uncommonly large to me.
This is a “someone should go to jail” level of criminal negligence.
