EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) — KTSM spoke with people who have specialized in safety and jacuzzi installments about the tragic incident involving an El Paso couple in a jacuzzi at a resort in Puerto Peñasco.
Jorge Guillen, 43, and his wife, Lizzette Zambrano, 35, were in a jacuzzi just after 8 p.m. on Tuesday, June 11, at Sonoran Sea Resort in Puerto Peñasco.
Guillen died after he was electrocuted and Zambrano suffered life-threatening injuries from a possible failure in the wiring.
Mario Solano, a safety consultant and safety engineer with Triple “S” Safety Services, said this could have been prevented. He explained what usually is at the root of an incident like this.
“If they got shocked or electrocuted inside the jacuzzi, there was nothing to prevent the electricity from being cut off, which normally indicates it did not have a ground fault circuit interrupter (GFCI), and if it did, it could have been faulty,” Solano said.
Solano explained that a GFCI is a failsafe protecting people and their hot tub that will kill the power to the tub if anything goes wrong and allows a person to flip a switch shutting off the power to the unit as well.
He also said that in the US, the National Electric Code (NEC) requires hot tubs to have a 240-volt GFCI to protect people from shock and electrocution.
Solano pointed out that according to the National Fire Protection Association’s website, Mexico and other countries in Central and South America, rely in some form on the NEC.
The owner of a pool installation company in El Paso, explained what has to be done in order to ensure customers are safe when providing services like theirs.
“Making sure that your team knows how to ground properly, that the equipment be installed correctly, that you run power to it correctly with a breaker and you have to have certain preventative measures so that if there’s electrical outbursts and shorts, to cut them off. There are things that absorb the energy, so that it doesn’t make it to the person. You have to take step one, two, three, four and do it correctly,” said the owner of Pools El Paso, Abel Rodriguez.
The General Prosecutor’s Office for the State of Sonora is currently investigating the incident.
Family friends have created a GoFundMe for the couple. To access that, click here: Support for Jorge and Lizzette’s family in crisis.
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