Safety System Eyed for Swimmers at Kiwanis

Town officials are eyeing an estimated $6,000 to $7,000 investment in a wireless system that they hope New Canaan never needs.

The “Wahooo Swim Monitor System” from Redding-based Aquatic Safety Concepts LLC is designed to save swimmers from drowning through what essentially is a sonar detection and notification system that alerts lifeguards when someone is submerged for 20 seconds or more.

The New Canaan YMCA is willing to foot an approximately $30,000 bill to pay for the system’s installation at Kiwanis Park this summer for campers using the facility there, according to Recreation Director Steve Benko. Benko says he’d like to see the town invest the estimated $7,000 for 150 of the system’s headbands for kids so that children in the town’s camp at Kiwanis can use it, too.

“I think it’s a good tool for something like Kiwanis because a lot of times you’re counting heads out there as a lifeguard and this is a good backup system to have,” Benko told Patch. “We run 90 campers a day through there, and we have counselors watching the kids in water along with two lifeguards, and we have buddy check every 10 minutes, so we do a lot of checks, but I feel like this is an important tool to have.”

The Park Commission at its last meeting supported the Y’s proposed investment in the capital project needed to anchor the Wahooo SMS system—the hardware would include an approximately 12-by-12-foot concrete block, wires and antenna system on the floor of the swimming hole at Kiwanis. Approval from the Baord of Selectmen and Town Council is needed for that work.

The brainchild of three Redding men (see photos) whose kids had been classmates of a 9-year-old boy who in 2006 drowned in a pond at a Redding town park (suffering permanent neurological problems, as he wasn’t located in the water for a full five minutes), the Wahooo system was installed and used last summer at a “dark water” pond that the Wilton Family YMCA uses for its own campers.

Wilton Y Executive Director Bob McDowell said he’s a major proponent of the system as a tool for lifeguards (see video attached).

“We have not had any accidents, no real-life situations with it, but we know the system works and we are confident it will enhance our swimming environment, especially the dark water situation, and boost our safety,” McDowell said.

For the system to work, the campers wear headbands with sensors in them, and the kids like wearing them, McDowell said.

“They put the band on and we make it part of the camp experience, part of the recreational experience,” he said.

Wilton is one of four camps that used the system last summer, according to Paul Newcomb, general manager at Aquatic Safety Concepts. In each case, safety is driving camps to adopt the system, Newcomb said.

“The motivation is the fact that lifeguards are human and they are imperfect,” he said.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, drowning is the number two cause of accidental death in the United States among people aged 1 to 14, behind only car accidents.

Here’s how the Wahooo system works, Newcomb said: If a swimband is submerged for 20 seconds without breaking the surface of the water, a signal is picked up by sensors in the water and transmitted to a surface unit (see images, attached). That unit flashes yellow, which turns to red and includes an audible alarm at 30 seconds. On dry land, lifeguards have a handheld locator device that helps them home in on the signal.

“In a typical scenario, it takes anywhere from three minutes to three hours to recover a victim in a dark water environment,” Newcomb said. “With the handheld locator device, you are reducing it to seconds.”

No other company has created a system that works like Wahooo in dark water—such as that at Kiwanis.

Benko said the town drains Kiwanis around May 15 each year, and the highway department comes in with loaders, rakes on the leaves out, and puts in new sand and re-smoothes it.

“That would be an ideal time to install this system,” Benko said.