Check out these water safety tips from the American Red Cross

Summer is filled with many of our favorite activities — swimming, fishing, boating … the list goes on.

The American Red Cross offers a wealth of information about water safety. Here’s some of it:

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 drownings happen every day in home pools and hot tubs, at the beach or in 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.

Things to Know About 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 jackets, 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.

The Red Cross provides details here.

And here are more water safety tips from the Red Cross geared toward child safety:

Anywhere there is water, there is risk for drowning. Do not leave a young child unattended near any source of water, not even for a moment.

Remove the risk and prevent access.

• Use physical barriers to prevent children from accessing any source of water.
• Use safety locks on toilets and keep bathroom doors closed and toilet-bowl covers down if there are small children in the home.
• Empty cleaning buckets immediately after use.
• Empty kiddie pools immediately after use.
• Install barriers around your home pool. Pool alarms and covers provide additional layers of protection.

• Know the water hazards in your community and make sure children stay away. These hazards could include —

  • Drainage ditches
  • Garden ponds
  • Creeks and streams
  • Wells and cisterns
  • Canals
• When visiting another home, check the site for potential water hazards and always supervise children.

Practice water safety.

• Teach children to always ask permission to go near water.
• Never leave a young child unattended in a bath tub and do not trust a child’s life to another child or to aids that help a child sit upright in the tub.
• Have young children or inexperienced swimmers wear a U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jacket around water.
• When swimming, set specific rules for each individual based on swimming ability.
• Designate a person to watch over children whenever they are in, on or around any body of water.

Know how to respond to an aquatic emergency.

• If a child is missing, check the water first. Seconds count in preventing death or disability.
• Know how and when to call 9-1-1 or the local emergency number.
• Enroll in Red Cross water safety, first aid and CPR courses to learn what to do.
• Have appropriate equipment, such as reaching or throwing equipment, a cell phone, life jackets and a first aid kit.

For more information or to enroll in Swimming and Water Safety courses, contact your local Red Cross chapter.