Joe Peters knew he was taking a chance with the kind of pool safety video he wanted to create. He was looking for real-life drama. No sterilized how-to primer. The kind of tale that makes everyone shiver.
And that’s exactly what he got. If his “Safety & Rescue” video doesn’t scare you into thinking of water as a lethal weapon, maybe you, like the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz,” should be looking for a heart.
The 56-minute video is part tabloid TV, part wake-up call.
Narrated by Jack Nelson, coach of the Ft. Lauderdale swim team, the video mixes re-enactments with real-life accidents.
Take the case of 2-year-old Richie Spires of West Union, Ohio, who was walking around the edge of an above-the-ground pool while the rest of his family frolicked in the water. Suddenly, Richie leaned over and fell in. No splash. No cry for help. Just a little boy on his way to becoming a statistic. Luckily, Richie was revived and survived. The lesson: A child can drown with others close by and never make a sound.
No age limits
But it’s not only toddlers who are victims. Just ask 20-year-old David Clark of Baton Rouge. Recently married and going to college, he had everything going for him until he dove into the water at his in-laws’ pool. When David didn’t come up right away, his family thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He hit the bottom, damaged his spinal cord and became a quadriplegic. The lesson: The average home pool is not deep enough for proper diving.
The video also includes heartbreaking looks at the lives of people who were brain-damaged from near-drowning incidents.
“A representative from a big pool company told me the video was offensive,” said Peters, who wrote and produced the video. “I told him there is nothing more offensive than losing a child. Every single accident is preventable. No one dives into the water intending to break their neck. No one goes into the water intending to drown.”
Peters of Coconut Creek, Fla., and his partner James Fazzini of Wilton Manors, Fla., have spent more than $150,000 to produce the “Safety & Rescue” video, plus a video on pool maintenance. They are recorded in stereo and are close-captioned for the hearing impaired.
Their goal: to prevent drownings and spinal cord injuries. They hope to give at least 10 percent of their profits to the Keeping Your Heads Above Water Foundation, the non-profit corporation they created to teach children how to swim. But thus far, sales of the videos have been limited.
Parents grateful
“The experience has been extremely discouraging for my partner,” Peters said. “We have contacted all the largest swimming pool contractors in the country, and we recommend to them that it would be in their best interest to offer the videos after they have finished building the pools. To date, not one building contractor has responded in a favorable way. One of the leaders in the industry told me he brought the safety video home for his children to watch, but he wouldn’t give it to the owner of the company.”
The one satisfaction for Peters and Fazzini has been feedback from parents, who have been grateful for the wake-up call.
“Our goal is to educate people in a new way,” Peters said. “I believe through education we will see a lot less water-related tragedies. It’s an investment. I would like to prevent all of these tragedies. I may be unrealistic. But no one thought man would walk on the moon, and it happened.”
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To order the videos, call 800-277-POOL (7665). They are $29.95 for the pair or $19.95 each, plus postage and handling.
