In Reply to: A Tragedy in THE VILLAS posted by meho on Wednesday, 21. July 2004 at 18:08 Bali Time:
The victim and his wife joined a tour to Bali. The activity of the evening was free time to choose between a self-paid spa service or to enjoy the hotel facility. The victim's wife and some members of the tour went to the self-paid spa, and were not at The Villas.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I have never seen a person drown in my life, (which I don't wish to see one, either) so it is only my imagination of how the story went. The victim and his wife said goodbye at the point when his wife went to the spa service, and he went to the pool. A couple of hours later, the accident was found and his wife was acknowledged. She ran to the pool and found him floating, or sinking(they drained the pool later), maybe struggling, or barely with sign of life......
Since nobody could swim, or know how to rescue a drowing person, they drained the water instead, probably to the level that somebody (considering Balinese are not tall, either) at the site would be tall enough to retrive him, and he was with very little sign of life or passed out. He needed a CPR. No body knew how to do CPR so his wife who had seen CPR on television try to apply CPR on him anyway. Thirty minutes later, the ambulance came, but everything was too late.
I don't know the condition when the victim was found. Consider if he was alive and struggling in the water, it could be devestating for his wife to see the only help could be offered was to drain the pool. It was not an ocean, she was watching her love one dieing just a few meters away from her.
A lifesaver could have been thrown or a pole could have been used to reach him if there was one. Speaking of that, how many of us even have seen a villa with lifesaver, or something that can float by a pool? The discussion has always circled around it is common for a villa not having a lifeguard. Imagine a person staying at a villa accidently breaks a glass and has a deep cut on his hand. While we certainly don't expect a villa would have a doctor to stich on site, would we not expect the front desk having something to slow down bleeding or clean the cut temperily? Considering a pool is much more dangerous, shouldn't there at least some basic rescue equitment by the pool?
Anyway, the lesson I learned from this story is that I would not swim alone and I wouldn't want to die alone, float on the water without anybody seeing how I die.