Water Safety

Ensure every member of your family learns to swim so they at least achieve skills of water competency: able to enter the water, get a breath, stay afloat, change position, swim a distance then get out of the water safely.

Employ layers of protection including barriers to prevent access to water, life jacket and close supervision of children to prevent drowning.

Know what to do in a water emergency - including how to help someone in trouble in the water safely, call for emergency help and CPR. 

 

Water safety is so important.

It only takes a moment.  A child or weak swimmer can drown in the time it takes to reply to a text, check a fishing line or apply sunscreen.  Death and injury from drowning happens every day in home pools and hot tubs, at the beach or oceans, lakes, rivers and streams, bathtubs and even buckets.

The Red Cross believes that by working together to improve water competency - which includes swimming skills, water smarts and helping others - water activities can be safer....and just as much fun.