At the Santa Clarita Aquatic Center’s Water Safety Day, many of the kids who attended were so young, they didn’t yet know how to swim — and organizers say that early start is what makes it so important.
Recreation Coordinator Jacob Acosta said that the core principle of Water Safety Day is education: The more community members know about what kind of emergencies could happen in the water this summer, whether that’s at the Aquatic Center or not, the safer they’ll be.
“This is really geared towards all ages, because the community really doesn’t have a whole lot of information on how common drownings happen over the summer, and the first way to prevent drowning amongst all aquatic professionals, they’ll tell you, is educating yourself,” Acosta said.
Stations covering eight major aspects of water safety, from emergency water rescues to skin care during outdoor play, were set up throughout the Aquatic Center’s activity and dive pools Saturday morning for kids and parents to visit at their own pace, with eight- to 10-minute lessons at each.
Water Safety Day was brought back after being discontinued in 2015, when it was run by the L.A. County Fire Department, Acosta said.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve kind of talked about the importance of water safety, the fact that May is Water Safety Month, and how we can kind of revamp the program in our own image through the city,” Acosta said.
Aquatic Center lifeguards ran most of the stations Saturday, along with deputies from the Santa Clarita Valley Sheriff’s Station, L.A. County firefighters and Kaiser Permanente employees assisting at the skin care station.
Parents said their kids were most engaged at the cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, demonstration station, where they could practice CPR techniques on a model adult torso and baby.
Vanessa Gonzales, who had her 3-year-old daughter, 14-year-old son, niece and nephew in tow at Water Safety Day, said her daughter Valentina had been especially interested in the CPR station.
Vanessa said she hopes learning about water safety will mean her daughter can safely enjoy her affinity for the water. Though she hasn’t yet learned how to swim, she loves being in the water, she said.
“She just wants to be in the water. That’s what she wants to learn, everything,” Vanessa said.
Alyssa Kiner’s daughter Raven, 6, was also all-in on the CPR lesson, giving chest compressions and learning how to time each push.
Kiner said her years as a teenage lifeguard impressed those techniques on her, giving her muscle memory that’s never gone away — which came in handy when both Raven and her son Griffin needed the Heimlich maneuver. The task of building that muscle memory can only benefit from an early start, she said.
“If they get introduced to this now, the more they remember it, and the more helpful it is to them as they get older,” Alyssa said. “You just don’t forget. If you do it over and over again, you don’t forget.”
