Health Club Patron Suffers Heat Stroke After Prolonged Sauna Session

I have worked in the design, start-up, management, and operations of high end health and fitness clubs for over 30 years. For this case, the actual locker room needs to be examined to see what is spelled out in all signage (i.e. recommended usage time, use at own risk, etc.) in that locker room and next to that particular sauna. I’m also wondering if the inside of the sauna is visible from the outside and if there are any windows. Another thing that needs to be considered in this case is what the club rules and regulations and membership agreement say in reference to the use of the sauna. Normal club practice for the safety of sauna users, unfortunately, heavily depends on the type of fitness clubs. High volume, low-cost budget clubs such as the one in question tends to have minimal staffing and no one inspecting the sauna on a regular basis.

That being said, at the higher end clubs that I have managed (with higher price points and lower volume), we always overstaff and all of our saunas had some sort of timers. There were two different types of timers. One was a timer that came on in the morning and shut off at night; at that club we had housekeeping staff checking the locker room every hour. The other timer was one that went on for 45 minutes at a time and then shut off.