Teaching Paterson, Passaic children water safety to prevent drownings
PASSAIC — Skyler H. wants to lose the water wings when she swims in her grandma’s pool.
Liam really wants to go swim in the deep end.
With the help of the responsible adults at the Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic and the ZAC Foundation, the city children will learn to swim and not be among the 4,500 young Americans who drown each year.
The foundation, started by the family of Zachary Cohn, a Connecticut 6-year-old who died from drowning in 2007, is part of a four-day water safety camp from Tuesday through Friday hosted at the Boys & Girls Club of Paterson and Passaic. There were more than 100 grade-school-age children at the camp on Tuesday.
The foundation has held its camps in Paterson in the past, but this is the first year it has become involved with Passaic children. The city and local leaders welcomed the organization to the city.
Water safety, after all, is an oft-neglected part of children’s education and is particularly hard to teach to inner-city youth, ZAC Foundation educator Michael Inganamort told the Boys & Girls Club and community leaders.
With an estimated 18,000 school-age children in Paterson and 13,000 in Passaic, and just a handful of pools between the two communities, teaching them to swim can be difficult.
Even getting districts or the state education system to incorporate water safety courses into the school curriculum is a tough sell, despite the sobering statistics on drownings among city children.
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“It’s the No. 1 cause of death for children ages 1 to 4,” said Inganamort, a Republican assemblyman from Sparta representing the state’s 24th District. “Fifty-five percent of adults have never taken a swim lesson.”
It is also the second leading cause of unintentional death for children ages 1 to 14, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most drownings of children between the ages of 1 and 4 occur in pools, while those after age 4 are most likely to happen in open waters such as lakes, ponds and rivers.
Learning to swim is one way to reduce drownings, but socioeconomic factors weigh heavily. City residents and those from the lower economic echelons are the most at risk, partially because of the limited number of pools and the inability to afford swim lessons.
According to stopdrowningnow.org: 64% of African American, 45% of Hispanic/Latino and 40% of Caucasian children have few or no swimming skills.
Community leaders get involved in water safety
Part of Inganamort’s plan was to involve community leaders including Passaic Schools Superintendent Sandra Montañez-Diodonet, Boys & Girls Club’s leadership, first responders and more in a forum on drowning prevention.
During the conversation among leaders on Tuesday, just about everyone knew of a near-drowning experience involving a loved one.
The superintendent said her son almost drowned at camp, which opened her eyes to the need to teach him to swim. Tuesday’s forum, she said, had her seriously thinking of how she can incorporate swimming and water safety into the school curriculum.
Others, too, had loved ones pulled out of trouble, something the Paterson Fire Department’s Frank Lozada said is all too common. He said he saves about a half-dozen people from drowning each year.
Lozada said that even with relatively few swimming spots, those who live in the lower part of Passaic County can still manage to get into trouble, as some will venture into the Passaic River and others into privately owned pools.
Most of the time, Paterson’s water rescue crews fulfill their mission, but not always. Better to teach people not to venture into open waters, experts say, and to help people if trouble strikes.
Water safety lessons also include teaching people to be wary of flash floods, such as the ones in 2021, when a number of local residents were swept away when the downpours from remnants of Hurricane Ida caused severe flash flooding.
The ZAC Foundation’s nationwide program is to teach the ABCs of water safety, as well as the Ds and Es.
A: swim only with an adult around; B: swim only where there’s a barrier, like a fence, or indication that the water is guarded and safe to swim; C: take swim classes; D: be cautious of drains and pump intakes; E: a reminder that water and the potential for drowning is everywhere. There are also two Ws — water watchers, or adults who will watch swimmers to keep them safe.
Six-year-old Zachary Cohn drowned after his foot became tangled in a drain.
The ZAC Foundation is holding the forums with local leaders to spread the safety word from the grassroots level, Inganamort said. “We are not here to tell communities what to do,” he added, but to raise awareness.
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