Councilman Claude Mattox's
Arizona Republic My Turn Column

September 2006

Summer Free of Child Drownings in Phoenix

Every year in recent memory up until 2006, we have felt a deep loss as summer ends.

A handful or more of empty cribs, empty high chairs at the dinner table, empty spots in preschool classrooms.

These represent the children lost to pool drownings.

With the summer of 2006 nearly behind us, I am ecstatic to report that there has not been a child drowning death in the city of Phoenix for more than four months.

On May 14 a child died in a bathtub. The last pool drowning in Phoenix was on April 9.

Since those tragedies, not one parent in Phoenix has had to bury a child who died in the water.

This is the first summer with no pediatric drowning deaths in the city since we started keeping records in 1989.

The reasons are many, but the biggest is the community's response to the strong message of water safety that the Phoenix Fire Department, the United Phoenix Fire Fighters Association, the Drowning Prevention Coalition of Central Arizona and others have been sending out for years.

"We've all been waiting a career for this," said Fire Chief Bob Khan.

Just a few years ago, we would not have believed that a whole summer would pass without the kind of news that keeps you up nights and makes you cry for families you don't even know.

But the Fire Department's education efforts and work from countless others in the community have combined to bring the concepts of water safety to many who never had given it much thought.

Maybe we've reached a tipping point on this issue, with word traveling through the media, at family gatherings, at places of worship and in conversations at the office.

And it's been a team effort.

For example, the Phoenix Aquatics program gave swimming lessons to 25,000 young people this year. All of our pools use the captive audience approach to educating. They get the kids out of the water during the busy swimming days and teach water safety basics.

The United Phoenix Fire Fighters Association has been incredibly supportive, with its strong Adopt-A-Fence program donating hundreds of pool fences to those in need. Members walked one neighborhood earlier this year and identified 53 pools without fences. The program donated the time and supplies to put all of those fences up and fix a dozen others. Our thanks go to organizations like The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, SRP, SCF of Arizona and the Phoenix Association of Realtors for supporting this life-saving program. To get more information, donate money or request a fence for someone in need, call 602-277-1500 or visit www.saverkids.org. For more great information on water safety, you can also go to phoenix.gov/fire.

Our biggest thanks go out to the community. You have listened to the water safety message, installed pool fences, checked the Web or called for water safety tips, taken CPR classes, signed up for swimming lessons and kept eye-to-eye contact with all children around all water all of the time.

Though this summer has been a wonderful, rewarding one, our work is not finished. Phoenix and our neighbors must keep focused.

Our only hope is that by continuing to bring attention to this issue, we will keep moving the trend in the right direction, with tears of joy helping wash away years of sorrow.

Phoenix District 5 Councilman Claude Mattox created the city's Water Safety Task Force. You can reach his office at 602-262-7446 or council.district.5@phoenix.gov.