KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Fun Splash Wa­ter Park own­er Vi­jay Ra­mai said yes­ter­day that he had reached out to the fam­i­ly of five-year-old D’amari Jef­fery, who drowned at his fa­cil­i­ty on Sun­day.

Ra­mai said he gave his com­mit­ment to stay in touch with the fam­i­ly dur­ing their pe­ri­od of grief and to work with them to help al­le­vi­ate their bur­den.

D’amari died while un­der­go­ing treat­ment at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal af­ter some­one found him float­ing in a pool at the Debe fa­cil­i­ty, hav­ing gone there with his moth­er, Ani­ka George, and oth­er rel­a­tives to cel­e­brate his cousin’s sec­ond birth­day.

Ra­mai said the drown­ing was the first death in the com­pa­ny’s 13-year ex­is­tence, adding they would now have to en­force new rules on the use of pools at the fa­cil­i­ty.

“Our ex­pe­ri­ence (in the in­dus­try) for the last 25 years, par­ents have left their kids and be­come de­pen­dent on pool at­ten­dants. They car­ry a cer­tain role, but the de­gree of risk will change over time.

“Wa­ter parks are high-risk, as a lot of peo­ple are not able to see the dan­gers. Be­cause this is our first death at the wa­ter park, we will im­ple­ment new strate­gies to re­duce risk,” Ra­mai said.

He said an im­me­di­ate re­sponse will be the en­force­ment of a new height lim­it on pools at the fa­cil­i­ty.

Ra­mai said he would not cast blame on any­one, as he was treat­ing the in­ci­dent as an ac­ci­dent. He said it was al­ready a trau­mat­ic in­ci­dent and Fun Splash re­gret­ted it hap­pened.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, an adult saw D’amari mo­tion­less in the adult pool around 4 pm. Emer­gency Med­ical Tech­ni­cians who ar­rived on the scene at­tempt­ed to re­sus­ci­tate him and took him to the hos­pi­tal, where he was even­tu­al­ly pro­nounced dead.

And while there is now a pub­lic de­bate over who was re­spon­si­ble for Jef­fery’s death, life­guard su­per­vi­sor Lennox Dwari­ka said all wa­ter parks and pub­lic pools should have life­guards for their op­er­a­tions.

Re­ports said there were signs at the fa­cil­i­ty say­ing there must be full-time su­per­vi­sion of chil­dren, as there were no life­guards on du­ty and that peo­ple un­der five feet must be able to swim. There were pool at­ten­dants on du­ty, but rel­a­tives ques­tioned why there were no life­guards.

Dwari­ka told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that while he was un­sure what laws gov­erned these busi­ness­es, it was ad­vis­able to have trained per­son­nel avail­able at all times. He ex­plained that life­guards un­der­stood that in­ci­dents in wa­ter could hap­pen in the blink of an eye, es­pe­cial­ly where there was sig­nif­i­cant depth. He said life­guards al­so con­sid­ered drown­ing a pre­ventable oc­cur­rence.

“You must have some­one who is con­stant­ly su­per­vis­ing and look­ing af­ter pa­trons at these parks and wa­ter parks. By ex­ten­sion, what one must ad­here to is that par­ents should su­per­vise their chil­dren, and it should be with­in the lim­i­ta­tion of where chil­dren can bathe and play,” Dwari­ka said.

While many adults were in and around the pool, he said, they may not al­ways be fam­i­ly mem­bers who would pay close at­ten­tion. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, Dwari­ka said, some peo­ple may not have the vig­i­lance to look out for some­one else’s child, know the signs of dis­tress, or might be pre­oc­cu­pied. He said some peo­ple on­ly re­alised how quick­ly wa­ter be­came dan­ger­ous af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an in­ci­dent.

There­fore, Dwari­ka said par­ents should do noth­ing else but mon­i­tor chil­dren, whether at wa­ter parks or pub­lic or home pools. He al­so said it was safer to look over­head rather than be­ing in the wa­ter with them.

“If a par­ent is su­per­vis­ing their chil­dren bathing, they should not be in the wa­ter. And sec­ond­ly, if they even have to leave to get a bot­tle of wa­ter from a cool­er, the chil­dren should come out of the wa­ter.”

Dwari­ka said there was a prac­tice that even if a life­guard had to go on a bath­room break, every­one had to come out of the wa­ter, or some­one take over the watch be­cause they did not want to lose su­per­vi­sion. He said some peo­ple would see it as a bit rigid, but it is im­por­tant to save lives.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact OS­HA per­son­nel for com­ment on reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the op­er­a­tion of wa­ter parks yes­ter­day but was un­suc­cess­ful. A search of the OSH Act al­so did not re­veal spe­cif­ic reg­u­la­tions for wa­ter park and pool op­er­a­tions.

Al­so con­tact­ed, the TTPS’ Child Pro­tec­tion Unit and San Fer­nan­do po­lice said they were in­ves­ti­gat­ing the drown­ing. While in­ves­ti­ga­tors be­lieve the death was ac­ci­den­tal, they said they were con­tin­u­ing in­quiries to un­earth the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing it and were await­ing an au­top­sy re­port.