A pool service technician in Charlotte County, Florida, suffered multiple facial fractures when a pressurized pool filter lid blew off and struck him in the face. Weslee Blakeslee spent two nights in the hospital after the Nov. 4 incident.

Blakeslee told the station he was working on a pool filter when pressure built rapidly. A lid came off, cutting his cheek and knocking him to the ground. Nearly a week later, the swelling had gone down, but he said the left side of his face was still numb, making it difficult to brush his teeth. Even wearing glasses put pressure on his injured nose.

“This was just a regular Wednesday, and it could have been so much worse,” Blakeslee told Gulf Coast News, which originally broke the story.

A GoFundMe co-organized by his wife, Ana Blakeslee, says he was transferred to a hospital in Fort Myers for specialist evaluation. The family’s account describes nine fractures in his face, including his jaw, cheek, nose, and bones surrounding his eye.

Pool filter failures have caused deaths and serious injuries in the past

Blakeslee acknowledged how fortunate he was that his injuries weren’t far worse, and is currently recovering at home. Other pool workers have died in similar incidents. In June 2023, a worker opening a residential pool in Sandy, Utah, was killed when a filter lid blew off and struck him in the face. The investigation summary says it remains unclear what he was doing when the lid separated.

In December 2012, a filter housing lid struck a worker in the head at a residential pool, causing facial fractures and putting him in the hospital for two weeks. OSHA’s accident summary noted deformation on the ring clamp that secured the lid. Investigators reported that the bolt holding the clamp together appeared to have pulled free under excessive pressure.

A similar injury happened to a Florida homeowner. In a 2020 investigation, Tampa Bay’s WFTS reported that David Shimkus had just finished cleaning his pool filter in Belleair Bluffs when the metal top blew off and struck him in the forehead. He told the station he was still dealing with daily pain from the injury about a year later.

For service crews, the clamp on a split-tank filter is a pressure-retaining component. The ANSI/APSP/ICC standard for above-ground and on-ground residential pools addresses that hazard directly. It calls for perimeter-clamped filter tanks to release air pressure gradually before the clamp disengages the tank halves. The Florida incident leaves an open question about which component failed. The earlier cases show how serious the consequences can be when a lid separates.

BREVARD COUNTY, FL — For swimming pool builders along Florida’s Space Coast, Monday, November 2, was anything but business as usual. An extraordinary rainfall event inundated portions of Brevard County, flooding neighborhoods, closing roads and turning active swimming pool construction sites into muddy reservoirs.

According to The Washington Post, portions of Florida’s Space Coast received as much as 28 inches of rain in approximately 36 hours, equivalent to nearly half the region’s typical annual rainfall. The relentless downpours overwhelmed drainage systems, flooded residential neighborhoods and brought construction activity to a standstill.

In some of the hardest-hit communities, nearly two feet of rain fell as a slow-moving weather system repeatedly delivered heavy downpours across the region. The National Weather Service characterized rainfall in portions of southern Brevard County as a 1-in-1,000-year event, a statistical designation indicating a 0.1% probability of rainfall of that magnitude occurring in any given year.

By Tuesday, November 3, the storm had claimed at least two lives. Joshua Bennett, 34, was found dead in his truck in a flooded area of southeastern Palm Bay, while Archie Richards, 78, was discovered inside his Toyota Tacoma in a canal near his home in Malabar. Emergency crews rescued hundreds of people as rising water inundated residential neighborhoods and left vehicles stranded.

Preliminary rainfall reports showed 23.69 inches in Grant-Valkaria, 23.44 inches in Malabar and 19.75 inches in Palm Bay. The extraordinary rainfall overwhelmed drainage systems, flooded homes and brought construction activity to a standstill in affected neighborhoods.

For Jeff Jones, owner and builder at Spacefront Pool & Spa, the storm struck directly at the communities he serves. Several of his active construction projects were caught in the flooding.

From Active Construction Sites to Underwater Excavations

Before the storm, Jones’s crews had been progressing through the normal stages of swimming pool construction. Excavations had been completed, plumbing installed and, at some locations, steel reinforcement and forming were already underway.

“Today was one of those days that reminds you just how unpredictable the construction industry can be, especially here on Florida’s Space Coast,” Jones said. “Today we had multiple swimming pool construction sites flood, freshly excavated pools filling with water and surrounding soil washing back into the pools.”

For a pool builder, an open excavation represents considerably more than a hole in the ground. By the time plumbing, rebar, and forms are installed, crews have already invested substantial labor and materials into preparing the site for the next phase of construction.

Flooding at this stage can undo days of work and leave contractors facing costly repairs. But before Jones could begin assessing the damage, there were more immediate concerns.

A Builder’s First Priority: Safety

“Even with roads closed due to flooding, I made it out to our job sites to assess the situation and address immediate hazards,” Jones said. “One of my biggest concerns was the electrical equipment associated with our pumps.”

With floodwaters rising, he worked to disconnect electrical power safely and remove pumps where conditions allowed.

“Some of my pumps were a foot below water.”

The danger wasn’t limited to electrical equipment. Submerged excavations concealed steel reinforcement, unstable soil and other hazards that could pose serious risks to anyone attempting to recover materials or equipment.

Jones understood there was a point where the effort to protect a construction site just had to stop.

“You can rebuild a swimming pool. You can’t replace someone’s life.”

But the damage to his construction sites wasn’t the only thing weighing on Jones.

“What made this situation even more devastating was that some of our customers’ homes were flooding as well,” Jones said.

“As a business owner, your first instinct is to protect your work and your investment. But you quickly realize there’s a much bigger picture.”

The flooding had turned what began as a construction emergency into something far more personal, with Jones balancing the responsibility of protecting his business against the immediate needs of the families he serves.

Weeks of Recovery Ahead

With the immediate danger beginning to subside, Jones faces the difficult task of assessing what can be salvaged from his flooded construction sites.

The damage to an unfinished swimming pool can extend well beyond the water visible in an excavation. Heavy runoff carries soil, sand, and debris into the work area, potentially compromising excavation walls, displacing forms, and undermining surrounding ground. Plumbing and steel may also require inspection or repair before construction can resume.

Some projects may need little more than pumping and cleanup. Others could require extensive excavation repairs, re-forming and additional inspections. Saturated soil and elevated groundwater levels can further complicate recovery, making it necessary to evaluate site conditions before removing accumulated water.

“This is going to set us back weeks,” Jones said.

The setbacks come with additional labor costs, equipment expenses and the challenge of coordinating crews and subcontractors around work that must now be repeated. For a pool builder managing several projects at different stages of construction, those disruptions can ripple through the entire schedule.

Florida contractors are accustomed to dealing with unpredictable weather, but the magnitude of this event illustrates how even experienced builders can find themselves facing circumstances beyond their control.

Jones has spent years working in an industry where weather is an unavoidable part of the business. His experience has taught him the importance of job-site drainage, protecting equipment and preparing crews to respond when conditions improve. Yet even those precautions have their limits.

“Preparation is everything, but even the best preparation can’t prevent Florida from being Florida on a random Monday in November.”

For now, the work ahead involves assessing the damage, restoring affected construction sites, and getting projects moving again. The financial consequences have yet to be fully determined, but the delays are already a certainty.

As Jones put it, “Mother Nature doesn’t care about your construction schedule.”

Photographs courtesy of Jeff Jones, Spacefront Pool & Spa.

A former New Jersey pool company manager has been charged with theft after allegedly selling company equipment through an unauthorized eBay account and keeping more than $14,000 in proceeds, according to police allegations reported by Newport Dispatch.

Jessica Szurick, 42, of Clifton, was charged Oct. 27 with theft by unlawful taking following an investigation involving Preferred Pool Management Inc. in Fairfield. The company’s owner contacted police Aug. 27 to report the alleged unauthorized sales.

Investigators said industrial machinery and pool equipment had been sold through the account. Financial records obtained through court-authorized subpoenas allegedly showed approximately $14,253 from three transactions deposited into a bank account registered to Szurick rather than the business. The owner also reported unauthorized company credit card purchases, which were reviewed during the investigation.

According to Daily Voice, Szurick’s LinkedIn profile listed employment with Preferred Pool Management from May 2018 through July 2026, most recently as a senior regional manager. The profile described responsibility for 161 commercial aquatic facilities and approximately 315 seasonal employees.

Szurick was issued a complaint-summons and is scheduled to appear in Essex County Superior Court on Dec. 9. The charge remains an allegation, and she is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Tracking Equipment and Sales Proceeds

The available reporting does not explain the alleged motive or establish which safeguards Preferred Pool Management had in place. But the alleged transactions illustrate a vulnerability other pool companies can examine: equipment leaving the business without the corresponding revenue reaching its bank account.

Pool Magazine recently explored pool equipment theft and its costly consequences for homeowners. Inside a pool business, protecting those assets requires more than locks and cameras. Employees need access to equipment to do their jobs, and owners need records that account for what happens afterward.

The Cost of Earning That Money Back

For a pool company, an equipment loss can create expenses beyond the item itself. Depending on what disappears, the business may face an urgent replacement purchase, a delayed installation, another truck roll, or hours spent reconstructing records. The reporting does not establish whether those disruptions occurred in this case.

Even the direct loss can take considerable work to recover. At a hypothetical 10% profit margin, a company would need $100,000 in additional sales to generate $10,000 in profit—the amount needed to offset a $10,000 unrecovered loss. That follows OSHA’s cost-divided-by-profit-margin calculation.

The reported eBay proceeds do not establish Preferred Pool Management’s total financial loss. They put a dollar figure on the transactions investigators say they traced.

Building Accountability Into the Business

For pool companies, the challenge is giving employees the access they need while maintaining oversight of valuable assets. Managers must be able to purchase equipment, move it between locations, and keep jobs moving. Those responsibilities should come with records another person can review.

The Insurance Information Institute recommends businesses “implement tight accounting controls that include frequent audits and take steps to ensure employees are aware of these practices.” Its employee theft prevention guidance also encourages businesses to provide a way for employees to report concerns without fear of reprisal.

For a pool business, that oversight can start with equipment sales. Document the item, require authorization for its release, and have someone other than the person arranging the transaction verify that payment reached the company’s account. Equipment marked discarded or damaged should also have a documented explanation.

Broader occupational-fraud research supports the value of internal oversight. “Organizations with effective anti-fraud controls in place consistently experienced lower losses and faster fraud detection,” the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners states in its 2026 occupational fraud findings.

As a pool company adds crews, vehicles, and service locations, an owner’s ability to personally track every asset becomes harder to sustain. Equipment may move among a warehouse, several trucks, and multiple job sites before anyone considers selling or disposing of it. The records and review process need to grow with that operation.

The Fairfield allegations remain for the courts to resolve. For other owners, they present a reason to examine their own process now. Delegating responsibility keeps the business moving; independent review gives the owner confidence that equipment releases are authorized and sale proceeds reach the company. Establishing those checks during everyday operations is far easier than reconstructing the trail after something goes missing