Parents and children were out in full force at the Oxford Valley Pool in Fairless Hills on Friday, seeking relief from the blistering heat. Yet while there were plenty of swimmers inside the pool, there were a few spaces that were noticeably empty: the lifeguard chairs.
“In the height of the summer season, to already be short staffed and only have four or five lifeguards, I think it’s dangerous,” said Dave Leidich, a parent.
Lauren Volpe, the manager of the pool, wholeheartedly agrees.
“You need to have more staff,” she said. “You need to have more eyes. People think that lifeguards are babysitters. We are not babysitters. We are here to prevent accidents.”
Volpe says that when Bucks County mandated lifeguards work full-time during the summer with no time off, many staff members at the pool quit. Now, instead of having the usual eight lifeguards per day, Volpe says there are now only three to five each day.
Volpe says she expressed her concerns to her own supervisors but received little response.
“I think they’d like to fire me to be honest with you,” she said. “I don’t think many people are happy with what I did. But I know inside of myself that you have to do the right thing.”
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She then went to a Bucks County Commissioners Meeting on Wednesday where she pleaded for more funding.
“It’s great to know that that’s her top concern,” said Samantha Nysse, another parent. “The safety of the kids that come to her facility and the families that come here.”
On Thursday, a 7-year-old boy nearly drowned inside a Cobbs Creek pool. On Friday, he was declared braindead at the hospital. In light of the incident, Volpe says she knew she did the right thing by going to the meeting.
“I don’t want that to happen here,” she said. “Like I said at the commissioner’s meeting, it shouldn’t take a tragedy for people to wake up.”
Bucks County officials have not yet made a decision regarding funding. They do say however that Volpe is not in danger of being fired and that the publicity she created “may help the spots be fulfilled.”
