Drownings of eight children under six one summer prompts coroner's investigation

Warning: This story deals with child drownings and may be upsetting to some people.

The drownings of eight children aged under six in one summer have prompted an investigation by the coroner who says adults must more closely supervise young children near the water.

The children, who ranged in age from nine months to five years, died in rivers, private paddling and above ground pools, a public pool, a lake and at a beach during the summer of 2021-2022.

Coroner Michael Robb recommended adults either hold young children or be in close contact when they are in the water and that they directly supervise individual children without being distracted by online content, domestic tasks or talking to others.

Robb also recommended signage in public places be clear and blunt about supervision and that adults should not assume lifeguards would notice a drowning child, because it could happen as quickly as a child slipping under the surface.

He also recommended new legislation to deal with the ongoing risks with portable and temporary pools at home.

Water Safety New Zealand said 54 children aged five and under had drowned since 2015. Nineteen of the deaths were in pools.

The coroner suppressed the names of the dead children and those of their whānau but released each of his findings together.

In the first case a five-year-old boy was standing at the water's edge at on Marine Parade Beach in Napier on 10 December 2021 when he was swept out to sea and drowned.

On 22 December a five-year-old girl who went to a public swimming pool in Christchurch with her siblings and grandparents, drowned after getting into difficulty in an area of the main pool that was over her head.

The coroner said signs at the facility required a child aged five or under to be supervised by an adult within arm's reach but they were not sufficiently prominent in the foyer.

In the third case a four-year-old boy was playing with his teenage sister at a lake in Northland on 4 January 2022 when she went to find a balloon that had blown away.

She and her brother had never swum at the lake before and were unaware of a sheer drop-off.

The coroner said there were a lot of people swimming around the boy that day but no-one noticed him disappear until he was seen floating unresponsive.

The next day a five-year-old boy drowned after going missing from a family gathering at a waterfall bordering the Whirinaki River, south east of Rotorua.

His mother had eaten lunch in her vehicle and said she could initially see her son but looked away for about five minutes.

Three days later a two-year-old boy was with 20 adults including his mother and other children at the Wairahi Stream in Northland when he disappeared while his mother was helping set up food away from the stream.

He was eventually found submerged in the water hole the children had been playing in.

On 12 January a 19-month-old boy who enjoyed swimming with floaties in the family's inflatable pool, had finished swimming when he disappeared from inside the house and was found a short-time later unresponsive in the pool.

Robb said the pool was meant to be fenced but the family had a rule of removing the ladder whenever an adult was not swimming in the pool. He ruled the death a tragic accident.

On 14 January a nine-month-old girl crawled into a paddling pool while her mother slept, and drowned.

Robb said the baby's death was avoidable and that police and Oranga Tamariki should have taken steps to help her struggling mother after her six-year-old sister was found the three previous nights wandering the streets alone, about 1km from her Porirua home.

In the final case, a five-year-old boy became separated from family during a walk at the Hutt River on 9 February and was later found unresponsive by search and rescue 40 metres downstream of where he disappeared.

The coroner noted that when children were in or near the water there was often general observation and supervision by adults.

"What can occur is a false sense of security that the children are being supervised because of the presence of numerous adults and/or older teenagers in the area undertaking a general supervisory role over the group of children.

"There can be an expectation that if something goes wrong with the child in water this will be obvious, and it will be observed by an adult or someone old enough to provide physical assistance."

However, he said contrary to popular misconceptions, a young child can slip below the surface without calling out or splashing loudly and can quickly drown unnoticed.

"This is why vigilant and constant observation of each individual child is required when they are near water."

He said supervision of children while distracted was not effective.

This included general rather than constant observation, watching a child at a distance or while reading, texting or being online, and supervising while carrying out other tasks such as cooking or talking with other people.

"Supervision around water is only effective when it is accompanied by either direct physical contact with the child, holding the child, or holding their hand, or being so close that the moment a child comes into contact with the water the child can be physically reached," he said.

The coroner recommended that signage at public swimming pools should detail caregiver responsibility for supervision of children, be prominently displayed and that the messaging be blunt, clear, and consistent nationally.

He noted Water Safety New Zealand's statistics that there had been two drownings of young children at beaches in the past decade, compared with 17 in home pools and 26 in rivers, lakes and ponds.

He recommended that temporary pools of 1.2m or higher only be sold with an appropriate safety gated entry and that Water Safety New Zealand and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) come up with legislation to save children's lives in connection with temporary home pools.

The coroner also recommended that local councils take a proactive approach, including working with Water Safety New Zealand to promote provision of water safety classes in their communities.

Water Safety New Zealand general manager Gavin Walker endorsed the recommendations saying they must be enforced and expanded.

He called for small portable pools under 1.2m high to be withdrawn from sale.

Walker said water safety had transformed in the 1980s when mandatory fencing legislation was introduced and rates of child drownings plummeted.

However, he said water safety was now at risk because of cut-price temporary pools which were flooding the market.

"Action must be taken on the blurred lines around safety for permanent and temporary pools."

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