I also "saved" a little girl in a pool once. I say "saved" since all I did was let her grab my arm and drag her over to the wall of the pool. It was at Disney World and was a very large pool, but only about 4 feet deep. She was a fairly young girl, maybe 5 years old, trying to swim across the pool. She knew how to swim, but was a little too young and it was to far for her to get across the pool. I noticed she was in trouble and went over to her and held my arm out and walked her over to the edge. One thing I felt good about was when I first saw her and grabbed her and looked up, I saw a life guard was getting ready to jump in and help her. It was a very large pool with a lot of people in it. Kudos to him for paying attention. When she got out of the pool he thanked me and then talked to her for a couple of minutes. I was looking around and never did see the parents. I've read thats its very common for someone to drown in a pool with a lot of people around. No one notices the person in trouble until its to late.
I just read that a 13 year old boy drowned at WDW recently. He was in the pool with his family, sounded like there were quite a few people in the pool, but it was after hours when the lifeguards were off duty. The boy was found at the bottom of the pool which was not deep. The father started CPR and the kid was alive at the ER but he died later on. From the reports I read it sounded like the family was in the pool playing around and the kid was out of sight for a short while. I was reading some comments on a news site and one of the family members was answering some of the comments. Best guess is that the boy was hit in the head while playing around or he dived head first in the pool. If either of those happened, one would expect the medical exam to find something.
Pretty &*())&*@^%()*% awful regardless. To be on vacation at The Happiest Place on Earth, playing with the family in the pool....
WDW has a huge number of life guards. Our last trip to WDW, a tropical storm hit on our last two days of vacation and it just rained and rained. We went swimming because we were going to get wet anyway. :laughing::laughing::laughing: Hit the pool and slide for awhile, get cold, sit in the hot tub, warm up, repeat. :thumbsup:
At some points we were the only ones in the pool being watched by 2-4 life guards!
They were all bundled up in long pants and jackets with hoods.
About the only people we saw in the pool over those two days was a family from Scotland that we got to know. We all spent quite a bit of time in the hot tub. They thought the weather was like being at home! :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing:
Disney not only has a large number of life guards but they move them around and give them breaks so they do not get bored. We splurged one trip and the kids got a surprise surf lesson at one of the water parks with a wave machine. WAY Cool! I wish I could have done the lesson. :dance1::laughing::laughing::laughing: We had to be at the park before DAWN to do paper work and the three hour class had to be completed by the time the park opened. There were maybe a dozen people in the class with two instructors and at least 3-4 lifeguards watching. A big cost in the class, was paying for the life guards.
I spent some time talking with one of the park engineers. I forget the exact numbers now, dang it, but they had something like six or nine wave machines and each had a 200? amp motor. They could makes some big waves! :laughing::laughing::laughing:
Later,
Dan
