Coroner's Finding: Meika Hawes
Deceased
Meika Hawes
Demographics
3y, female
Date of death
2009-11-30
Finding date
2011-08-24
Cause of death
Drowning
AI-generated summary
Three-year-old Meika Hawes drowned in her family's backyard swimming pool in Broken Hill on 30 November 2009. The coroner found the death resulted from two critical failures: inadequate supervision of the young child and non-compliance of the pool with safety standards under the Swimming Pools Act 1992. Her uncle left the house at 7:30pm without clearly communicating his departure to the other three adults present, who believed he was supervising Meika. The pool's access door was not self-latching as required by law and had remained non-compliant throughout the mother's ownership since 2007. On the day of death, a visitor failed to manually latch the door after opening it, allowing Meika to push it open and enter the pool. The coroner found the death was entirely preventable. Recommendations include strengthening legislation requiring pool registration and mandatory compliance certification, improving council enforcement, and enhancing property conveyancing requirements.
AI-generated summary and tagging — may contain inaccuracies; refer to original finding for legal purposes.
Specialties
Error types
Contributing factors
- Failure of carers to adequately supervise the deceased
- Pool door non-compliance with Swimming Pools Act 1992 - not self-latching
- Pool door latch not applied when door was opened by visitor on day of death
- Failure to communicate among carers regarding supervision responsibilities
- Inadequate enforcement of pool safety compliance by local government
Coroner's recommendations
- Swimming Pools Act 1992 be amended to require all swimming pools be registered with the local government authority for the area in which they are situated
- Swimming Pools Act 1992 be amended to require that within a specified period all swimming pools be brought into compliance with Australian Standard AS1926.1-2007
- Swimming Pools Act 1992 be amended to require all owners of properties with swimming pools to provide a certificate of compliance on a periodical basis to the relevant local government authority
- Swimming Pools Act 1992 be amended to extend the right of entry to properties for inspection of swimming pools to allow officers to determine whether a swimming pool exists on a particular property
- Swimming Pools Act 1992 be amended to allow local government authorities to impose a fee for inspections to recover the actual and incidental costs
- Conveyancing (Sale of Land) Regulation 2010 be amended to require that a certificate of compliance with the provisions of the Swimming Pools Act 1992 be a prescribed document for contracts involving properties with swimming pools
- Broken Hill City Council review its policies and procedures to ensure that issues relating to compliance with the safety provisions of the Swimming Pools Act 1992 are acted upon in a timely manner
- L J Hooker Conveyancing review its policies and procedures to ensure that the warning concerning swimming pools is brought to the specific attention of purchasers of residential properties with swimming pools and that a certificate of compliance be recommended
Full text
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