Swim lessons one key to water safety

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Sheila Gurd turned her back for just a second and her 22-month-old son, Cam, "went head first into the creek."

The creek runs behind their Gaines Township home and Gurd saw it all happen.

"I was standing right about here and he was right about there and just decided, head first," she told 24 Hour News 8. But she'd seen the WOOD TV8 Safe Water Campaign , and her watchfulness enabled her to snatch Cam out of the water without any trouble.

Alex Brinks, an assistant manager at Martin Luther King Pool, has studied drowning statistics as part of an effort to establish programs to teach kids how to be safe around the water.

"Statistically, it's a lot more likely for children who grow up in the inner city to drown or have death by drowning than it is for children in the suburbs," he said.

A report from the state of Michigan shows that between 2002-06, unintentional drowning accounted for just over 1% of the deaths in the state.

And a 2007 Center for Disease Control and Prevention study showed one in every five victims of unintentional drowning involved children under the age of 14, many from the inner city.

African-American children between the ages of 5-14 are more than three times as likely to be drawing victims as whites in the same category.

Many inner city kids and their parents simply haven't grown up around water, Brinks said, and don't have access or the economic means for the lessons.

That's why the city is pushing swim lessons as part of their summer pool programs.

"The more help we get from parents signing their kids up for swim lessons and keeping them affordable is really important for the children in this neighborhood," he told 24 Hour News 8.

On the Net:

Michigan injury mortality rate (pdf)