Saturday, July 7, 2012

Backyard pools

On the national news front there is a story about a child drowning in a neighbor's backyard pool in 2006.  The neighbor has just been charged with not maintaining a secure pool fence.

Every household in W.A. with a backyard swimming pool has to register it with the local council and regular inspections are made by council officials. Special childproof locks and fences ensure that kids cannot easy have access to the water and possibly drown. Our pool in Bicton was regularly inspected and we had to make some modifications to security over the years, but when we tired of swimming and converted it into a large pond, council informed us that we no longer had to stay on the register and security was not an issue. So kids can't drown in a pond?
I figured that every council has small lakes within their areas and to fence them off would be very expensive and certainly look crappy. And so that is how we had an unregistered pool/pond without inspections. Crazy??  The pond was at least a metre deep.

                                    Click to enlarge

1 comment:

Chris said...

That is definitely crazy. Kids are prone to drowning not only in swimming pools but also in ponds. I guess changes in the safety regulation might be needed.