Ras Al Khaimah: Moments of sheer terror for parents ended in a miraculous recovery of a four-year-old boy whose lifeless body was pulled from a hotel swimming pool by his sister.
Haya, 8, who attends Grade 4 in the British section at Sharjah International Private School, is being described as a hero for plucking the limp body of her brother, Adam, out of the water and getting him safely to the poolside where he was treated immediately by onlookers.
“My daughter was affected by the incident and she was scared for the safety of her brother. She considered herself his mother. She pulled her brother from the water and he was unconscious. She thought he was dead and started crying and screaming,” the father Waleed told Gulf News on Sunday. ”I am proud of my heroic daughter.”
Once out of the water, Adam was immediately attended to by a guest of the hotel, a doctor, for roughly an hour until paramedics arrived.
The boy was stable enough for a further 25-minute journey in an ambulance to reach the nearest hospital.
Today, the boy is out of hospital and recovering from his near-death experience. The tragic incident took place on Friday at the Ras Al Khaimah resort where the family was staying for a three-day break away from their residence in Ajman.
According to the father, his son was spotted floating on the surface of the water by Haya.
She knew him from his swimwear and jumped into the water and pulled him out.
“At first I thought that my son had died,” said the father.
“No one else noticed him floating in the water,” he said despite the fact “that a number of people were swimming in the pool”.
“A guest at the hotel — who happened to be a doctor — conducted the necessary first aid until an ambulance arrived one hour later.”
The accident has been confirmed by Ras Al Khaimah authorities.
Upon reflection after the incident, the father is troubled by an alleged lack of safeguards in the swimming area.
“My son was left for more than one hour on the ground and there is no lifeguard? No ambulance? No doctor [on staff] in the complex? And there is no health centre in all the area. It was a very tragic moment,” the father recalled. “I was screaming, asking for help … the hotel management said they had phoned the ambulance, which came after one hour and rushed him to Saqr Hospital which took more than 25 minutes to reach.”
The boy was admitted to hospital overnight and was discharged the following day.
Waleed said he was grateful that is son is alive but wants the resort to review the near drowning and take steps so that the terror of a possible drowning death won’t happen again to another family.
“Thanks to Almighty Allah that my son is still alive but to avoid such incidents, I hope authorities interfere and ask the resort’s management to appoint a lifeguard round the clock and appoint a doctor in the complex as well as set up a health clinic for emergencies.”
Local authorities said they are investigating the matter.
The accident is not the first case of drowning in the emirate, which has witnessed a series of swimming pool incidents in the last three years.
In April 2014, a five-year-old girl died after drowning in a swimming pool of Hilton Ras Al Khaimah Resort & Spa.
In November 2013, a 52-year-old man died after he drowned in a swimming pool at a resort while in June of that year, the same fate struck a five-year-old girl.
In February 2012 a woman died due to drowning, again in a resort’s swimming pool.
