They can also be deadly.
The risks around backyard pools are back in the spotlight after a coroner this month released findings into an unsupervised toddler’s death.
It makes for heartbreaking reading.
The findings outline how Aromaia Morehu Leoni Duff, her siblings, and parents were temporarily living at her grandmother’s home in Napier in March 2023.
The property’s unfenced temporary pool was about 3.66m in diameter and 76cm high.
On the day of her death, 20-month-old Aromaia was in the lounge with her mother, while her father was outside in a hammock on his phone. Her mother went to the bathroom, leaving the toddler with her 4-year-old brother.
Her mother was out of the room for “no more than 15 minutes”, while the girl’s father did not hear his daughter leave the house through an open sliding door or enter the pool.
Aromaia’s mother found her, but she could not be saved.
Police found toys and furniture “scattered about” the property, including a high-backed plastic outdoor chair about 1.5m to 2m from the pool.
A concrete slab, about 2m in length and 30cm to 40cm from the swimming pool’s edge, sat on cinder blocks beside it. The slab was about 10cm shorter than the pool’s top.
Coroner Heidi Wrigley rightly describes Aromaia’s drowning as “a tragedy waiting to happen”.
Unfenced temporary pools pose a “grave hazard”, and unfenced pools should never be in operation when young children are around, the coroner says.
She is not the first coroner to speak out.
Coroner Mike Robb, earlier this year, called for the sale of temporary pools under 1.2m to be banned.
Water Safety New Zealand is also concerned.
The organisation supports the call to ban the sale of these pools, and makes a strong point in saying it is unrealistic to get owners to fence them or spend thousands on a building consent.
Worryingly, Aromaia’s death is the fifth involving a temporary pool since 2014.
Water Safety’s acting chief executive, Gavin Walker, is “nervous” about the trend of deaths as the availability of these pools, particularly over the past five years, has increased.
The law regarding pools is strict, and anyone who owns a pool or is thinking of buying one has a responsibility to ensure they know it.
Rules include that inflatable, portable and temporary pools are treated like other residential pools. They must have required barriers that restrict unsupervised access by young children if they can hold water to a depth of 40cm or more and have water in them.
Full details can be found online.
This is a crucial issue, and Coroner Robb and Water Safety NZ present a compelling case in their calls for a ban.
But there is also a counter-argument.
A ban is a blunt instrument that removes the option of buying a cheaper pool and installing a lower-cost, yet still compliant, barrier.
This lower-cost option, even with consent costs, can remain significantly less expensive than a larger, permanent pool and more expensive fencing.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment says banning them is complicated.
It is a complicated issue, but it is also one that needs to be urgently reviewed, given the number of smaller and cheaper temporary pools for sale that are under 1.2m and the likelihood of people not following the law.
The bottom line is that this issue, like many others when it comes to parenting, boils down to parental and personal responsibility, common sense, and people following the law.
Parents and caregivers have the ultimate obligation to ensure young children are safe in and around the family home in every respect.
If people buy a pool, they need to ensure they follow the law and that children are always supervised.
They risk unspeakable tragedy and trauma if they don’t.
