“The Virginia Graham Baker Act must be revised,” said Hassan Hamza, president and founder of Vacless systems, which has become the industry leader in pool and spa safety vacuum release systems (SVRS).
He was talking about the tragedy that befell Aliyah Jaico, an 8-year-old girl who died after she was sucked into the plumbing of a lazy river at a Texas hotel this March.
He said the accident was totally avoidable.
“It could have been avoided if they had installed a simple safety vacuum release system,” Hamza said.
Hamza hasn’t seen the plumbing configuration at the Houston DoubleTree by Hilton hotel where Aliyah lost her life. But it takes very little imagination for him to understand what went wrong.
It happened at a hotel lazy river. Because it was open to the public, it probably had two or more main suction drains, as mandated by federal law — the Virginia Graham Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act. Those suction lines were probably covered by grates, as is also required by the law. Located next to those suction lines was the extra-large pressure line, used to push the water of the lazy river out in a single direction. The return line wasn’t covered. It didn’t have to be.
“The fact that it was a lazy river makes no difference: It was a body of water with a pump, a pressure side, and a suction side,” Hamza said. “Aliyah got sucked into a pipe that was supposed to be pushing water into the pool, and because of that, they didn’t have a cover on it.”
Safety Vacuum Release System (SVRS) According to Hamza, the reason it happened was that somebody made a mistake. Someone reversed the flow of the water, so that the suction lines became return lines, and the return line became the suction line. And the instant that happened, the pool had a single, uncovered suction line that was by law violating the VGBA.
Hamza says there are valves that can make it easy to switch between pressure and suction. He thinks that whoever was operating or maintaining the pool reversed the flow by mistake.
The Virginia Graham Baker Act does not require a safety vacuum release system on pools with multiple suction lines. It isn’t thought to be necessary. That’s because having multiple suction lines prevents the suction force from becoming so great that there is an entrapment hazard.
Safety vacuum release systems are required by the VGBA only for public pools with a single main drain. An SVRS is a simple device that attaches to the pool pump or to the suction line. It functions by detecting surges in suction pressure. If it detects a sudden increase in suction force — which occurs when a suction line is blocked — it instantly allows outside air into the pump, causing the pump to lose prime and all suction force to be removed.
A pump protected by an SVRS cannot cause suction entrapments, regardless of how many drains the pool has installed.
And when it comes to pool and spa safety, Hamza said that the laws and the inspectors are focused on the suction side.
“But a mistake happened that made that focus useless,” Hamza said. “Entrapments happen because of mistakes. Entrapments happen because of missing covers — that’s a mistake. Switching from pressure to suction was a mistake. They say you don’t need a secondary safety system when you have multiple main drains, but you can see that in this case, it was needed. Because people make mistakes.”
“The Virginia Graham Baker Act must be revised, making it mandatory to install secondary safety systems on all public pools equipped with single or multiple main drains to guard against entrapment caused by switching the direction of the flow.” Hamza said.
