Town of Fort Smith recreation staff say the municipal pool is closed until further notice after a pair of tempered glass goggles “shattered in the pool.”
Staff need time to drain the pool and thoroughly inspect the pool and filtration systems for any remaining fragments of glass, the town’s recreation team stated on Friday evening.
“Every fragment must be accounted for,” the advisory stated. “Even a single missed fragment poses a significant safety risk, which is why any broken glass in the aquatic facility results in an immediate closure.”
When the pool might reopen isn’t clear.
Tempered glass goggles usually take the form of dive masks or snorkel masks. While they are often labelled shatter-resistant and are designed not to crack into shards if they’re damaged, this is by no means the first pool to close because someone’s goggles broke.
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In fact, it isn’t even the first North American pool to close for this precise reason this week.
Webster City, Iowa, had the exact same problem at its outdoor pool according to local news reports published on Wednesday.
In that community, staff anticipated the closure lasting about a week.
The same problem took a week to resolve at another Iowa pool last year, while a municipality in Michigan published a photo of the offending tempered glass goggles when its own pool suffered the same fate.
Some pools have banned those types of masks as a result.
Fort Smith recreation staff said a ban already applies at the town’s pool. “The rule is simple: If it’s made of glass, it stays out of the pool,” Friday evening’s advisory stated.
