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Jul 17, 2008 12:36 am US/Eastern
Pool Drain Causes Potentially Fatal Child Accident
MIAMI (CBS4) ―
We say it so often, but stories like this remind all of us of the dangers of the backyard pool. A little girl is lucky to be alive, and luckier still to be doing so well in her recovery after she was sucked to the bottom of her family pool by a vacuum drain.
There is a movement nationwide to prevent accidents like this from happening.
4-year old Rose Cozier is a precious little girl. She is also an example of how a dip in the pool can nearly turn deadly.
"All of a sudden I turned to her to see what she was doing, and I saw her distressed face I saw she was struggling," said Patsy Cozier.
Cozier did what every parent should do. She supervised her daughter's swim in the family's pool. Then suddenly Patsy saw her daughter, underwater, with her tiny arm caught in the vacuum drain.
"I couldn't take her out because her whole arm was in the suction hole," said Cozier.
But Patsy knew every second counted. She somehow freed her daughter, gave her CPR and paramedics rushed the child to the hospital.
Across the country child advocates are waiting for the end of December. That's when a new law goes into effect that will require all public pools to install a special drain cover. It will prevent fingers, hands or hair from getting caught. This drain cover costs about $49.
Some pools will also need a special vacuum release system to prevent accidents like Rose Cozier's—an accident that left this family cherishing the life of a child.
"My daughter is alive and that is the best gift I could have received," said Cozier. "This is what life is all about."
Child safety advocates say Florida law is not as strict as it used to be regarding pool safety. They say the safety codes for pools were relaxed a few years ago. Legislators tried to pass a law to beef those codes back up, but that legislation failed this year. Advocates say they'll try again next year.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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