How Long Island homeowners can protect from pool drownings amid increase

Jamie Ryan doesn't work as a lifeguard anymore, but she does hire them.

Ryan, a teenage lifeguard-turned-pediatric injury prevention coordinator at Stony Brook Children's hospital, is intimately familiar with the dangers water poses to young children. She's spent two years advocating for Long Islanders to take precautions to prevent drownings, and follows her own advice — hiring lifeguards when she has an event at her mother's house in Stony Brook, which has a pool.

"In my mother's house, there's a lock and key. When everybody is done swimming in the pool, we lock the pool," Ryan said. "I hire a lifeguard for any event that I have at my mother's," though a lifeguard doesn't replace parental supervision, she added.

Ryan is one of many advocates that want Long Islanders to stay vigilant at pools and beaches, even as the summer season comes to an end. Local water safety advocates and elected officials say Long Islanders should take precautions to keep young children and older adults safe, amid an uptick in drownings in Suffolk County this year.

In the county, 14 people drowned between Jan. 1 and Aug. 13, fast approaching the 16 deaths the county saw in all of 2025, according to an Aug. 13 announcement posted to the Suffolk County Police Department’s social media.

Suffolk County Fire Rescue and Emergency Services received 117 water rescue alarms through Aug. 13, up from 87 calls during that same period in 2025, according to the announcement.

Ryan, who also leads the Suffolk County Drowning Prevention Alliance, says she's working to figure out why there may have been an uptick in drownings this summer, but the reason isn't yet clear.

Drowning deaths tend to increase in the summer months — when more people are using pools and beaches — and during times of high heat, though it's unclear whether that's due to increased water use, heat-related medical events or a combination of the two, Ryan said.

Nationally, drowning deaths rose after the pandemic: from around 4,000 deaths per year in 2019 to more than 4,500 annual deaths in 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study. New York State experienced a similar increase from 104 drownings in 2019 to around 150 drownings per year in 2020, 2021 and 2022, according to state data.

While the cause of the increase isn't known for certain, some experts told NPR the pandemic likely hampered swim lessons and lifeguard trainings, hindering water safety awareness.

But when it comes to tracking local deaths on Long Island, Ryan said it can be difficult to compare data from different municipalities that categorize drownings differently, making it harder to understand why people drown.

The CDC, which tracks state cases, is also more limited after President Donald Trump laid off the federal team responsible for tracking and publicizing drownings, amid massive layoffs at the agency, Politico reported.

"The CDC's drowning prevention team was eliminated last year. That is a big challenge," said Alissa Magrum, executive director of the National Drowning Prevention Alliance.

"I dream that I could push a button and see the current, up to date numbers and who's drowning and where, because that helps us with prevention messaging. It helps us with interventions," she added.

Barriers and supervision

Even with limited data, experts say everyone should be careful at pools — particularly families with young children.

Drowning is the leading cause of death for children between one and four years old, according to the CDC. In late July, a two-year-old girl died after she was found unresponsive in a Mastic Beach pool on Mill Drive, days after a three-year-old boy from Brentwood died after being found in a swimming pool in Central Islip, where he was attending a party, Newsday reported.

"It only takes two minutes and two inches of water for any of us to drown," said Shawn Slevin, the founder and executive director of the Queens-based nonprofit the Swim Strong Foundation. "Two minutes, two inches. That's it."

State law requires Long Islanders to take some precautions: homeowners must install an at least four-foot-high fence around a pool with self-closing and self-latching gates equipped with child-proof locks, alarms on doors that have access to the pool and a pool alarm (unless the home already has an automatic safety cover), according to state guidance for homes built after 2006.

David Leonard, a sales manager at Bohemia-based Dunrite Pools, said he recommends a pool safety cover as well to prevent access to the pool when adults aren't supervising the area. He said that electronic pool covers — which close automatically — can range from $20,000 to $25,000, while manual covers can cost a few thousand dollars.

But fencing and covers are just the first step when it comes to protecting against drowning, Magrum said. Long Islanders should also assign a designated adult to watch kids spending time in the pool, and switch out those "water watchers" every 15 to 20 minutes to stay alert.

Children who are weak swimmers or don't know how to swim can be put in U.S. Coast Guard-approved life jackets, and adults need to know how to administer CPR with rescue breaths, Magrum added.

Older adults should also take precautions — like not swimming alone, Magnum said.

While older adults may be strong swimmers, a trip, fall or medical event such as a stroke can cause someone to drown, Magnum said. At least four older Long Islanders — ranging from 63 to 87 years old — have died this summer after being found unresponsive in residential pools, Newsday reported.

"Never swim alone, regardless of your age or swimming ability," Magrum said. "If you're by yourself and you have an issue — whether it's a heart attack, a stroke or a seizure — or you don't have water competency and you're by yourself, your chances of survival are much less."

Long Islanders should also make sure their home insurance's liability limits would cover them in the case of a serious accident, Loretta Worters, vice president of media relations at the Insurance Information Institute, told Newsday in an email.

A significant claim "could affect future insurance costs or coverage options," Worters said in an email. "Depending on the insurer and where you live, having a pool could affect coverage requirements, eligibility or the cost of insurance. Features such as diving boards or slides may also raise additional liability concerns because of the potential for more serious injuries."

Knowing how to swim

Kids should be put in swim lessons, said Ryann Leonard, executive director of the Connecticut-based Stew Leonard III Water Safety Foundation — created after her brother, Stewie, drowned when he was 21 months old.

Leonard, the daughter of supermarket CEO Stew Leonard Jr. and his wife Kim, has two children under the age of three. While she said she understands how difficult it can be to balance different after-school activities, she asked parents to make swim lessons a priority.

"It's never too early. It's never too late. Just prioritize teaching them how to swim," Leonard said. "My dad says this a lot: if Stewie knew how to just roll over on his back and float — which is something that you can learn to do at a really young age — he would maybe still be alive today."

Learning to swim is particularly important on Long Island, a region surrounded by ocean on three sides, Leonard added. State data shows that, outside of New York City, Nassau and Suffolk counties have had the highest number of reported drownings at pools and beaches in the state over the nearly four decades from 1987 to 2024.

Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a state law late last year requiring every school district in the state to provide information on drowning prevention, water safety and swimming at the beginning of the 2026-2027 school year.

But Slevin, of the Swim Strong Foundation, said the law doesn't go far enough. She has pushed for another senate bill, introduced last year by New York State Senator Joseph P. Addabbo Jr., that would create a classroom-based education program for water safety at outdoor and man-made bodies of water. But that measure has failed to advance, Addabbo said, in part because it would mean changing school curriculum.

The bill would teach kids "what to look out for, how to avoid the risk and, once you're in a situation, how to deal with it — the rip tide, the currents and so forth. You don't need a pool. [We would] bring all this information through an instructor right into the classroom," Addabbo said, adding that he plans to reintroduce the bill during the upcoming state senate session in January.