hello i'm middlesex district attorney marian maria thank you for tuning into this episode of middlesex update today we're going to be talking about safety issues over the summer the things that are challenges with the warm weather to help people keep their folks and keep folks keep themselves in particularly their children safe over the summer they key areas we're going to be talking about are water safety windows safety and cop car safety and some people wonder why that's a province of the district attorney and one of the responsibilities that i have is to respond to any unintended death across middlesex county and what we learn from those incidents especially those heartbreaking cases that involve children is that many of these deaths are preventable and an important way to do that prevention work is through education already this summer we've partnered with professionals in lauren foresman health care and community leaders like our guest today to get people having these conversations about how to say say stay and how to encourage those good behaviors some of the things we've done already have included a fireworks demonstration in cambridge a summer safety day at the stone zoo in stone him at the chest and he'll mall in newton's cow about as a north reading and as simulated drowning in water safety alert in wakefield and tragically we have already see both in middlesex county and across the state just in these first few weeks of summer a number of drownings and water incidents and that's going to be a specific focus that we'll have today and it's my great pleasure to be joined today by three experts in safety who work closely with children in our community and i'm happy to be introducing chief james mcintyre the police chief from stone him to my left to chief back attires l sanchez who is a newborn specialist dr sanchez is affiliated with the brigham and women's hospital cambridge hospital and holy family hospital in with their way in and to her left adam rogers the executive director of the boys and girls club on him in wakefield thank you all for being with me today and chief are going to start with you and before we get to the topic just ask you to tell us a little bit about your background and what your particular interest is in these areas are going to police officer  and really do both the community want and you have a couple of children yourself so you know about these safety measures in thinking about that and dr sanchez tell us a little bit about your background and these issues there i'm a pediatrician and i specialize in one of pediatricians for interested in keeping the only safe and keeping children say and prevention is a lot of what i had experience for my daughter was young watching young children learning to swim in a pool one day when i was working out of my health center and it is fired me to help her to get letters when she was very young and it's something that we have to keep all families is making sure that everyone in the family  thanks chief we know kids out of school they're spending a lot more time at home sometimes they're on supervised at home and what we know is that the accidents that happen in the house usually involve kids getting into things that they're not supposed to be accessing or your son or daughter is heading outside to go play with friends know what they're going to hold or hang with and set some expectations about when you want them to check back in with you whether it's before lunch if they're going over to another friend's house for a set period of time after two hours i want you to give me a call kids are on their bikes in school it's pretty important that the kids realize they need to obey the rules of the road because of traffic when they're coming onto the roadway as was any kid under the age of sixteen these two were a helmet and have it properly fixed in the head so in the case of they get into an accident they almost designed to do what it does particularly mentioned chief with respect gardening those power tools care around those law and more ways every year we hear of a number of children being hurt in those kind of accidents so my my oldest daughter enjoys cutting the lawn so she knows she has to wear shoes and i protection as well so you you know want to have a little one lose a finger for your natural deficits we know that drowning is one of the leading causes back to the little death and the children make up the largest group of those victims and they often are situations that occur in the home tell us a little bit about how that critically happened and what things are risk for children for drowning better sort of outside of what we might think of like the pools and things like that and that's a great question and in preparation for today i came up with two acronyms that i thought would help families think about safety this summer and the first one i'm are dangerous options available that drowning statistics theory by age group it turns out that children less than four you're that age are more likely to drown in the home than outside so dangerous places are tubs prevention prevention prevention that's a anticipation and is usually you must be vigilant so if you have a young child and you're in a swimming pool they must always be within arm's length this is not a time to be on your cell phone this is not a time when you can read a novel by the side of the pool if you have a child in the pool you must be touching that child older children if they swim they should always swim with a buddy if you happen to be out of school if you the key things is prevention anticipation and vigilant in the household and around the yard unfortunately several times over the course and just malls that are built and please if you that it's very refreshing it's great for the kids to be in there but when you're done empty it and turn it over so young children can up over there there are small cons of people having their homes a child can drown in a little bit of water so basically the keys to success are vigilance if you haven't come all you need to make sure there's a fence around it that's very secure but i'd say overall if you have a child in the water you are on duty all the time you make a great point  sometimes you know as parents especially we're reluctant to get involved when you see someone for instance leave their kids there but you're saying the better thing these are our children is to step up and say i'll be watching them probably make people think twice about should i really go out and do an errand while the kids are at the pool and chief the doctor mentioned the fence around the pool what are the actual regulations about people who have a home or so my understanding is the massachusetts building code requires is having a conversation with your kids don't you know it's one of those things that sometimes our kids can be our best advocates in our homes for keeping our set ourselves safe and i know you're looking at your acronym there for pay very definitely the for educate you know just to educate the kids looking over i want to go swimming if i want to be around water do i have an adult with me that's watching me that making that and then be is if there's barriers in place respect those barriers that there's the fence that the chief talked about if there's something in the way you want to make sure that the kids know that oh there's a reason why there's a barrier there because we want to keep you safe we want to keep you away from something that could be dangerous so if there's a gate and it's locked respect the gate and respect that don't hop any fences to get into the neighbor's pool or anything like that and then the see as you talk about classes and making sure that kids who know their own some ability you know you don't have especially as kids get a little older you know they might going to places where their friends or where there may not be and to be respect know their own some ability know oh ok i need to work on  trip or any of that and then the last one day is just stay away from drains you know the we have hopefully not as much anymore but now with some new regulations but there's been some a lot of tragic and says a kid strong swimmers get stuck in the suction of a drainage hot tub or things like that and we just want to make sure kids know to stay away from the drains and everything so i think the most important thing is just have that conversation with your kids and just start talking about why it's important you know with as they get older talk to them about the fact that children you know making sure there's two parts i think you know making sure the kids know that they should never be something without an adult present and that's you know if your friends friends want to go to the pond and you go swimming in the pond everything you know you've got to make sure they know that that's not ok it's not just something we do or you know you got to bring adults with you and really be able to respect it the second piece of it and i think you know talking about summer bike bike helmets on it we i think you we went through this a few years ago it's just like like we put bike helmets on like we buckle your seatbelts every time in the car if you're going in a body of water if you're going on canoeing you're going near water put a life jacket on and we need to kind of train the kids early on that putting a life jacket on is not you know something to be ashamed of or anything like that but it's  something that we do just like every time we get in the car you buckle your seat belt every time you get near the water you put your life jacket on and just really kind of push that push them to wear life jackets as much as possible and dr we've been talking about how education is such an important piece of prevention and i know you're a strong advocate of people learning teaching their kids how to swim in a very early age you tell us a little bit about that and how important that is in terms of making sure we don't get to that situation when they were older we need not a good swimmer yes i think it's really important that everyone in the family should learn how to swim and every now and then you might encounter a family where for whatever reason the parents are a little bit afraid of the water and it's important to acknowledge that but it just so happens that i went to a college where every graduate had to take a swimming test before they could graduate from school and i think the concept is that you need to be able to be safe for yourself and possibly for others so that the boys and girls club is a place here locally that offers little lessons and i think it's really important for families to touch base with their communities there are pediatricians and find out where there are classes and start as young as possible you know probably anywhere after year at the beach or so there are the mommy and me or daddy and me classes just to get children accustomed to the water but any time you have a young child i'd say anywhere less than eight years old near the water as a parent you have to be there touching them and if they're older they need to have a buddy system so learning to swim is really key but also i think part of that is making sure the child is a safe swimmer that they could tread water that they could hold their breath underwater that they could do a few laps but i think part of it in our community here in mentioned just every child being able to tread water flowed know how to get in and out of a pool if your child is four and above and they don't know how to do that yet you need to get them in a program as soon as possible and i know what i think we're going to try some resources at the end of some places where they can websites they can go and people they can contact to get that but it's so important to just become comfortable in the water change transitioning to another issue that catches up very predictably every summer we hear the tragic story of a child left in a car on a hot day like where experiencing at this point will tell us a little bit about first of all how you could make sure that you that doesn't happen where the tips you for making sure the kids are safe and then secondly when is th line between you know the that's a horrible situation we've just locked your keys in the car and then folks who may think it's ok to leave a kid in the car to go run an errand with a window well but again safety is the the big thing you're shooting for in don't leave kids alone don't your kids want to the car don't encourage kids to play in the car at home so you want to keep the car walked at home you want to make sure that the your keys with your remotes are not in a place where kids can get them car escalates pretty quickly and young children are very vulnerable to heat so if it's a young child who's as we talked is it strapped in a car seat and can't get out by definition they're probably age five or less and they're going to be very vulnerable to heat dehydration and possibly heat stroke in this hot weather and in the terrible situation that that a car as a child overheated a car what is the intermediate steps you  one right away but if you can get access to the child obviously want to take the child if you can to a cooler place cold compresses will help to decrease the temperature if the child is capable of drinking water would be the key  ingredient in the short term but it's basically you want to try to remove the child from the hot environment and get the child to a cool one as soon as you can and she put about that obviously some of the safety protections we have in cars now have made it much harder to access th car what do you do when you see decide to call the number when you see that situation there fortunately for us the fire prone would respond to a situation like that and they have the tools that we can use to get into a vehicle whether it's slim jims or other two other means when all else but there's a real pattern to that what is some of the things that you've learned over the years where the safety piece is of keeping that from happening at the during this whole conversation one of the themes that keeps coming up is knowing where your child is so not leaving a child question and basically as we've all said what you want to do as a parent if you're a parent or guardian a care provider for a young child you don't want to be in the situation of resuscitating a child on the sidewalk you want to prevent the injury from taking place so the number one thing that you want to do everyone wants to have a great summer it's a wonderful time to do it yourself or will be it hands by not having a tragedy in your family and the way you can prevent that is prevention anticipation and vigilance so as the chief said if you've got down children at home you want to make sure there is no furniture or there is no way that a child can climb because children love to climb that's just what they like to do so you have to anticipate that you've got a toddler is go have furniture near the window but if you wind up in that unfortunate situation where your child has fallen through the window while you're waiting for obviously one call nine one one first of all but the other thing is you do not want to move the child because we would be worried about  injuries to the spinal cord and obviously you want to keep the child calm and talk to the child if the child is conscious and i would suggest if you are care provider a parent guardian or care provider for young children learning c p r is a really good thing to do and so if you are in a situation whether you're a bystander or care provider and you're able to start c p r while waiting for the emergency technicians that could possibly save a child's life but if there's a fall or injury you don't want to move the child in you don't want to move the head neck down and this summer so far i've been lucky to be out twice at the policing girls talking to the kids about safety  we played a jeopardy game with them and the kids did a great job they really were into what we talked about it were able to answer the questions and we hope they are taking that home and sharing it with their parents and their siblings but this is also a time when kids often spend a lot of time away from their own parents and their families you know them with a babysitter they're at the grandparents house what can we do with the kids to help them keep themselves safe and then also what should parents be doing which is they be thinking about when they're leaving their kids or sending their kids your child and sending it with them to grandma's house or sending it with them with the babysitter so that way it's always there it's not they don't go look for it it's just going to go near the water this is where we're going to do and the other thing we really talk to the kids about and try to talk to the parents about as well as if you're in a group you're at the family barbecue or there's you know plenty of adults around sometimes you know everybody thinks everybody else is watching the pool so designated your water watch or saying ok i'm the one who's watching the water and we we foundation which is a great foundation that has a lot of great resource some water safety and one of things they do is give a little you know necklace that has a card on it says i'm your water watcher and so get the pass that around at the party to make sure that you know somebody knows i'm wearing this i'm responsible for all these kids who are in the water so that it's not it's not just that everybody assumes everybody else is doing it but i think most and porn thing is having that conversation with the babysitter saying this is my expectations that when you're so is it a time to be talking on your cell phone this isn't a time to be reading a book and and you know here's a life jacket and we expect you to be doing these things and talking to the kids about their role in that and making sure that their siblings are safe and other kids around are safe but as the doctor mentioned if you're at a public pool you're at a public area you know sometimes our kids are the best ones being like hey they're not following the rules over there and things like that and doing that so the more we can educate the kids themselves and families and kind of build that culture of water safety around everybody so one of the things we talked a lot with the kids about was the fact that drowning doesn't look like it does in the movies where you hear the parson yelling for help you know waving their arms and really just knowing some of those sides of people being when when they're in trouble they're quiet and their hands are not up over the wire i think what we did the rescue effort in way can we show the kids that the people are not doing that and just i think getting that message to parents as well that if a child in the water should be making noise they should be yelling and screaming and splashing and if they're not that's a problem and chief we talked and we talked a little bit to this several about fireworks in the danger of those in that really traumatic injuries and if you can just mind folks about the fact that it is illegal to have bio works   get a better bang you know this displays a whole lot better than what you can do in your own way and that includes things that people find so popular those sparklers those are fireworks as well and dr they well kind of injury that those can cause the temperatures that those things get to there's a reason why they're illegal in massachusetts i'm very proud of massachusetts for the fact that they are illegal here they're not safe they are not safe they are not safe children can get burned so they can be blinded author to have each one of you participate this is a conversation that we hope has information spread far and wide to protect our kids over the course of the