Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Ben on July 01, 2011, 04:11:15 PM
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Holy crap. I have to wonder if the story is even accurate. If so, simply bizarre. First, that the kid told lifeguards someone was in trouble and they apparently did nothing. Then, the more bizarre part, that the pool was used for two days and no one saw the body.
http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/local/woman-dies-in-public-pool-in-fall-river-25-apx-20110629
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Saw the story yesterday. A whole lot of red flags go up. Kinda hard to miss a human body in a swimming pool unless said human died during a time when the pool was closed for a couple of days. Even if the pool is only lightly used, that's still many people and many pairs of eyes in and around the pool, not including the lifeguard(s).
Brad
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The article says that health inspectors also checked the pool on Mon. and Tues. and DIDN'T SEE A DEAD WOMAN IN THE POOL! Just when you thought the govt. couldn't possibly be any less competent...
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The article says that health inspectors also checked the pool on Mon. and Tues. and DIDN'T SEE A DEAD WOMAN IN THE POOL! Just when you thought the govt. couldn't possibly be any less competent...
Who says I ever thought there was a lower limit to the competence of the gooberment?
stay safe.
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That's why I have a Red Flag Warning. As incompetent as some .gov reps can be, even they have eyeballs. And that's not counting the people who would have been in the pool during the day.
Brad
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The USA Today article described the water as 'murky'. Even more attractive to swim in, then.
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Had I found out about a body in the pool I had been swimming in, I think I would've scrubbed my own skin off in disgust [barf].
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Had I found out about a body in the pool I had been swimming in, I think I would've scrubbed my own skin off in disgust [barf].
I think I would have done so even without the dead body, given the "murky" description.
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I just saw a picture of the pool on fox news.com - it's a murky green and you could hide most anything in their that didn't float.
Apparently the body bloated and popped up after two days :O
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'scuse while I go have an attack of the heebie-jeebies over in the corner.....
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I can almost see if the water wasn't really clear and the pool was very deep, it could go unnoticed, but that still would mean the lifeguards and such cleaning the pool and checking it out at the beginning and end of the day barely bothered to look in the pool.
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A follow up article said that the water was murky green, submerged visibility was 3-4 feet and the body was in the deep end of the pool, 12 feet deep, before it began to float.
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I don't get why they didn't do a complete search after the youngster(s) told the lifeguards some one didn't come back up.
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I don't get why they didn't do a complete search after the youngster(s) told the lifeguards some one didn't come back up.
Because that would involve, like, doing work and stuff......
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A follow up article said that the water was murky green, submerged visibility was 3-4 feet and the body was in the deep end of the pool, 12 feet deep, before it began to float.
See, that's another one of those red flag things. If the water was that nasty no one in their right mind would have been swimming there, much less the health dept giving the ok for the place to be open. There's wayyyyyyyyy to many questions on this on. I suppose I'll just have to be patient (blech) and wait for the final determination.
Brad
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Why would a sane person swim in a pool in that condition.
http://www.businessinsider.com/dead-woman-in-pool-massachusetts-2011-7
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I used to work under a guy whose other role was municipal health officer. I cannot even imagine allowing a pool with visibility of only 3 to 4 feet under water to remain open for even 15 seconds.
I also can't imagine anyone voluntarily entering an open cesspool like that ... not even in Fall River, MA.
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Why would a sane person swim in a pool in that condition.
http://www.businessinsider.com/dead-woman-in-pool-massachusetts-2011-7
Whoever posted that photo with the article needs their press card revoked... now. Look under the photo in the article and click on the source link to the photo owner's flickr account. There, the pic is clearly labeled "Kings Meadow Pool, Reading" It's a pool in Berkshire, England. There's even a wiki entry for it, complete with the SAME PHOTO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Meadow_swimming_pool
Journalistic integrity? NOT!!
Brad
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Thanks for digging that up, Brad.
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I can see that happening at a lake, but a pool?
Ew, ew, ew, ew! [barf]
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This is going to get even more strange, because in the 2 to 3 days before they found her, and that pool was mobbed with people (I'm watching the videos). There is no way a dark body would not be noticed in all that time!
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OMG!! Hasn't Whitey Bulger been returned to Boston? It's so obvious now!!!
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If the water really was that murky, then the story is only as unbelievable as the part where the kid told the lifeguard and no one did anything.
In murky water, the lifeguards should have been on heightened awareness around the slide / deep water. One person goes down the slide, one person comes up. In the story, the vicitm and the boy went down the slide together. I am sure this is against the rules. The guard was probably distracted, checking someone else, etc. Didn't notice that two people exited the slide, heard the splash, looked over and sees a little boy come up and swim to the side. One splash, one kid. All is well. . .
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This is going to get even more strange, because in the 2 to 3 days before they found her, and that pool was mobbed with people (I'm watching the videos). There is no way a dark body would not be noticed in all that time!
I disagree. I watched a video that included some views from a helicopter. The racing lanes, which are NOT in the deepest part of the pool, are fuzzy at the shallowest part and basically become invisible in the part that's deepest and closest to where the slide is located.
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I'm still hung up on the part where a municipal pool could be that nasty. Even here in Podunkia the you could see a quarter on the bottom of the 12' deep end of the pool.
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Sounds like some pool workers and health/safety inspectors are going to get some "reeducation".....
....either that, or all the public pools in town get shut down until December while the city "investigates" the problem and "disenfranchises" all the inner-city youth.... ;/
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I read that a police dive team did some tests and that the diver disappeared at ~3.5-4' depth. I saw a photo of the actual pool as well and it was really cloudy, almost like silt laden water.
If the body was stuck in some corner of the deep end, I could actually now see how it might have been missed by swimmers. Anyone swimming underwater (and it's usually just kids that swim around the bottom of the deep end in public pools from what I remember from my kid-hood) might have only made out another blurry person, or even if they brushed against her, might have simply thought it was someone else swimming underwater.
The other curiosity in this is that she apparently had five kids. How did no one report her missing?
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I read that a police dive team did some tests and that the diver disappeared at ~3.5-4' depth. I saw a photo of the actual pool as well and it was really cloudy, almost like silt laden water.
If the body was stuck in some corner of the deep end, I could actually now see how it might have been missed by swimmers. Anyone swimming underwater (and it's usually just kids that swim around the bottom of the deep end in public pools from what I remember from my kid-hood) might have only made out another blurry person, or even if they brushed against her, might have simply thought it was someone else swimming underwater.
The other curiosity in this is that she apparently had five kids. How did no one report her missing?
Also, if it was in the vicinity of the slide, or diving boards, there may have been no swimming allowed in that section.
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There's another issue that may yet be brought up.
A few years ago, a young girl was playing in a pool and got caught by the suction of the filter inlet on the bottom. It was really ugly. She didn't just drown -- she basically sat on the inlet, and the suction eviscerated her on the spot. As a result, regulations for new pools have been changed, and all newly-constructed pools have to have dual inlets separated by at least three (?) feet, or some other way of limiting the amount of suction at the drain inlet(s).
In my state, I'm pretty certain that public pools are supposed to have been retrofitted. But I don't live in Massachusetts. And even if the law requires it in MA, I'm sure Fall River is broke and didn't retrofit, and I'm sure the state doesn't have people traveling around to find out if all pools have been retrofitted.
From the videos, it looks like the slide was one of the enclosed tube type slides, so she almost certainly went down it sitting or semi-reclined, and hit the water rump-first in a more or less sitting position. Pool drains/inlets are usually located in the deepest part of the pool. If she went down in that position, it's possible that her rump settled on the suction inlet, and that she was basically trapped by the suction and couldn't resurface.
I worked for a pool filter manufacturer when I was in college. One summer I was in the factory, the next summer I did on-site service. Water as cloudy as what I saw in the videos would be a definite FAIL in the filter department. I'd guess the agency operating the pool never serviced the filter or backwashed it. They probably just checked the chlorine level once or twice a day and figured they had done all that needed to be done. Maybe not even that, because an adequate level of chlorine should keep the water fairly clear unless there's actual dirt (silt or mud) in it.