Fire department crafts water safety program
Fishers—Two retention pond drownings in two metropolitan Indianapolis communities have led to WARN – Water Awareness in Residential Neighborhoods.
Both deaths involved children.
Richard Haarbye, 8, drowned in a pond in July 2000 as he tried to catch fish with a paper bag near a Southeast side subdivision. A month later, 6-year-old Jackson Wayne Van Hook drowned while trying to catch frogs in a pond near a Fishers subdivision.
By the end of the year, the WARN program will be available in Fishers to schools and through the YMCA to educate children about water safety around retention ponds and swimming pools.
The program will include an instructional video, a Web site and a compact disc for program instructors and a children’s activity coloring book.
Fishers Fire Chief Brian Lott said that shortly after his department’s public information officer, Ron Lipps, began to develop a water safety program, the department learned of one developed by the Franklin Township Fire Department in Marion County.
Both programs were spawned by the retention pond drownings.
Now the two departments are working together to develop a more comprehensive program and make it available statewide.
Lipps said several area fire departments
have expressed an interest in the program.
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