A tragic lesson not to use lifeguards as babysitters, Council says

12.00 pm

The drowning of a four-year-old toddler in a supervised school swimming pool yesterday was a tragic lesson to parents not to use lifeguards as babysitters, a council manager says.

Efforts to revive Teremoana Tereroa, of Mangere, failed after he was found lying on the bottom of the Southern Cross Campus pool in Mangere. He was taken unconscious to Middlemore Hospital but could not be revived.

The pool was operated as a public pool by Manukau City Council during school holidays.

Manukau City Council manager Colin Dale said the four-year-old's parents or caregivers should not have allowed the youngster into the big pool which was restricted to children aged eight and over.

He said the lifeguard did not see the child on the bottom of the crowded pool.

Mr Dale said details of the drowning would not be known until the official police report was completed, probably later today.

He said it was not known how long the youngster had been on the bottom before another child discovered him when he jumped on top of him.

"He should not have been there. The family members should have been supervising him because no one under eight should have been in that pool.

"I don't want to put the blame on anyone at the moment because no one seems to know how the youngster died. He was certainly in the wrong pool. He should have been in the toddlers' pool."

Campus director John Clark said he understood the child was swimming at the 25m outdoor pool with at least one older sibling when the drowning occurred about 3.30pm.

"It's about 1.5m deep across the whole pool so, for the little ones, it's well over their heads."

Mr Dale said the lifeguard could not take responsibility all the time for all the swimmers and the ultimate responsibility rested with the caregiver.

"The lifeguard is not there to chaperone every single swimmer. The signage is there to say under eights should not go into that pool. The lifeguard did not see that child go into that pool."

He said two lifeguards were on duty -- well within the national guidelines of one lifeguard for every 200 swimmers.

He said too many people left their children at the pool, knowing there was a lifeguard on duty.

"People must not consider that they can go to a swimming pool and then devolve the responsibility to the public authority that is running the pool. That is not the case."

The two lifeguards were getting trauma counselling and Mr Dale said the rules and procedures would be examined in detail after staff recovered from the trauma of the drowning.

The pool remained closed as a sign of respect and because of the need to understand how the drowning occurred, he said.

The drowning was the second in the space of a week at supervised swimming pools. Four-year-old Troy Julius Matthews-Pulman died in Wellington Hospital last Friday after being found unconscious in a spa at the Porirua Aquatic Centre.

- NZPA