Drowned girl's family sues

The family of Amarni Dirani, who drowned while on a school excursion in 2006, are to sue the NSW Department of Education and Blue Mountains City Council.
A statement of claim filed in the District Court this month says teachers at Cambridge Gardens Public School, NSW failed to assess Amarni's swimming ability before the excursion and failed to supervise her while at the Glenbrook Public Pool.
It is also alleges that the council and its lifeguards also failed to ensure that only "swimmers" entered the Olympic-sized pool.
The NSW Deputy State Coroner Carl Milovanovich, who conducted an inquest into Amarni's death in September last year, found that it was "tragic but avoidable."
It was unclear how eight-year-old Amarni had come to be in the Olympic-sized pool, near the end of an inflatable device set up for the children to play on. Under the apparent supervision of 19 teachers and at least one lifeguard, no one remembered seeing her in the pool.
Coroner Milovanovich concluded that contributing factors to Amarni's death included a failure by the school to identity that Amarni was a non-swimmer and a failure to conduct an appropriate risk assessment for the use of the inflatable device.
The Coroner also found that Glenbrook Swimming Pool had failed to comply with its own guidelines, by allowing only teachers to supervise the inflatable device.
For Amarni's father Raja Dirani the issue is "plain and simple", stating "if you're not able to care and focus 100% on a child, then don't do it."
Raja Dirani said other parents should "scrutinize" their children's schools to ensure they could handle excursions, recommending that parents arrange to attend excursions if possible, particularly those involving swimming pools.