Finding into death of Choon Jie Chai
Deceased
Choon Jie Chai
Demographics
18y, male
Date of death
2019-05-31
Finding date
2022-05-10
Cause of death
Drowning
AI-generated summary
An 18-year-old Malaysian visitor drowned in a hotel swimming pool after entering water despite being unable to swim. He was attempting to rescue a colleague who had also gotten into difficulty. The pool was unattended by staff. Critical safety failures included: inadequate multilingual warning signage about pool depth and risks to non-swimmers; lack of supervision; and ineffective emergency communication systems. The coroner found the death preventable, identifying that appropriately trained staff supervision and clear multilingual safety information targeting non-swimmers would likely have prevented the tragedy. Recommendations focus on developing comprehensive safety codes of practice for hotel, motel, and caravan park pools, with attention to linguistic accessibility and non-swimmer identification protocols.
AI-generated summary and tagging — may contain inaccuracies; refer to original finding for legal purposes.
Error types
Drugs involved
Clinical conditions
Contributing factors
- Inability to swim
- Unattended swimming pool
- Inadequate multilingual warning signage
- No signage warning non-swimmers of pool depth
- Lack of staff supervision at pool
- Ineffective emergency communication (unanswered phone call to reception)
- Language barrier - warning signs in English and Mandarin only, but deceased may have spoken different language
- No process to identify or warn non-swimmers before pool entry
Coroner's recommendations
- Emergency Management Victoria review and extend the Safer Public Pools Code of Practice to include pools in Residential Class 3 buildings, including specifically hotels, motels, camping grounds and caravan parks
- Alternative: Emergency Management Victoria lead development of a new Safer Hotel, Motel, Camping Ground and Caravan Park Pools Code of Practice modelled on the existing Safer Public Pools Code of Practice
- When producing revised or new Code of Practice, Emergency Management Victoria consider circumstances of Choon Jie Chai's drowning and issues relating to signage and pool supervision and emergency communication; all operators of swimming pools in hotels, motels, caravan parks and camping grounds should be encouraged to explore options for communicating with patrons with English language challenges and ensuring such patrons inform staff if they are not confident swimmers before entering water
- Emergency Management Victoria convene an advisory group including representatives from hotel, motel, camping ground and caravan park industries, along with Life Saving Victoria, to assist with developing, launching and disseminating the Code of Practice and supporting implementation
Full text
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