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1 child killed after wind gust sends bounce house airborne at baseball game

https://apnews.com/article/bounce-house-child-killed-wind-29421d6a507a9577e2934a851144dd1b

Local Maryland officials say one child was killed and another was injured after a wind gust blew a bounce house into the air at a baseball game.

1 child killed after wind gust sends bounce house airborne at baseball game

One child was killed and another was injured after a wind gust blew a bounce house into the air at a baseball game in Maryland on Friday night, local officials said.

Local emergency personnel received a call in Waldorf, Maryland, at about 9:21 p.m. Friday from the Regency Furniture Stadium reporting that a moon bounce house became airborne because of a wind gust while children were inside.

At the time, the Southern Maryland Blue Crabs minor league baseball team was playing a game, and “the moon bounce was carried approximately 15 to 20 feet up in the air, causing children to fall before it landed on the playing field,” according to a news release from the Charles County government posted on its website.

A 5-year-old boy from La Plata, Maryland, was flown to Children’s National Hospital in Washington, where he was later pronounced dead, the release said. A second child also was flown out by Maryland State Police with non-life-threatening injuries.

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MrSpArkle

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They would have to drive the anchors deep into the ground to have any effect. The types of anchors I’ve seen on these things are little more than tent stakes to keep it stationary.

I think these need to be strapped to concrete barrels to be safe. Or banned if there is any wind over some limit.

USSEthernet

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We used to have our trampoline secured with the corkscrew type anchors. I wonder if those are strong enough. I know our trampoline never budged with those.

LustyArgonianMana

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They need to be banned. This happens almost every year.

Soggy

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One child almost every year is a staggeringly low incidence rate. If that's enough to get banned then children should also not be allowed near pet dogs, the beach, family members, heavy furniture, inside cars, or outside.

todd_bonzalez

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Funny, because we recall products that can kill children all the time, even when there are low death counts, because any lethal scenario that is possible with a child's toy or child-focused product must be accounted for.

At a minimum, the law must require that these be anchored securely enough not to be blow away. Put it on the companies that rent these out and set them up to do so safely, instead of making any amount of dead children an acceptable cost.

If this happens with any regularity at all, regardless of how rare, there's no excuse for letting it happen again.

Soggy

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I'm fine with requiring them to be anchored, and you're right that safety laws are pretty strict for toys, but we can't mandate literally-zero-risk-of-harm. "Rare" and "regular" are terms I generally think of as opposed and there's always going to be some cold calculation of "acceptable risk" on a personal and a societal scale.

WoahWoah

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Playgrounds. Hot dogs. Stairs. Cars (inside, outside, around). Cement. Bicycles.

frigidaphelion

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Ban outside!

LustyArgonianMana

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Yes, we must not sacrifice precious bounce houses just because one kid every so often dies /s

Just like when Kansas had that boy get decapitated by a water slide net due to their lack of regulations - why change safety regulations because 1 kid died?

And compare how ubiquitous bounce houses are versus dogs or others things. Because there aren't a ton of these, it's easier to regulate.

Soggy

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Easier to supervise, too.

If the design is inherently unsafe and regular use can result in injury, like the Verrückt water slide, then yes regulation and inspection is necessary. If the product is intended for children too young to understand basic safety precautions then strict design rules are important because we can't trust companies to be ethical on their own. But if the object in question poses an obvious minor-to-moderate risk, things like trampolines or skateboards or tire swings, it can be reasonably expected that the object not break from normal use but supervision and safety precautions are the responsibility of the consumer.

There's lots of room for argument about where the lines of acceptable risk are drawn. Personally I'm in favor of helmet and floatation-vest laws for children (and people accompanying children). I think bicycles are an acceptably risky thing for children to ride, but obviously tragic accidents do occur.

It's hard to find data pertaining to bounce houses specifically as there is no official governing body tracking them. It gets lumped into sports or recreation and without usage stats it's impossible to determine injury rate. They might not even be as dangerous as traditional playground structures.

LustyArgonianMana

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This is a great perspective.

I do actually think the design of bounce houses themselves is indeed what makes them dangerous. They are lightweight and filled with air by design, to be portable. They then can catch wind underneath them, again due to their design and how they are used with kids jumping on them, which makes them airborne. It is THIS specific situation that I take issue with and think they should be banned. Normal injuries from kids jumping into each other are acceptable imo, not a big deal. Even kids falling from a set height with most traditional playground equipment is acceptable risk as long as the structure itself is firmly in the ground as it is designed to be.

However, the design itself of bounce houses is the problem. They very thing that makes them bounce houses, is what makes them unacceptably dangerous imo.

Soggy

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I'm gonna defer to this guy John Knox, who has been studying bounce houses for two decades. https://accesswdun.com/article/2022/8/1123579/uga-study-discovers-132-dangerous-bounce-house-related-incidents

Airborn events are dramatic and awful but rare and preventable, and I think gut reaction legislation is bad practice. I would like to see widespread adoption of laws for securing and operating these things but I don't think they meet "ban outright" danger. Backyard pools are way deadlier and I don't even think those should go away.

LustyArgonianMana

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They aren't rare according to the article you linked:

Although cases of lofted bounce houses get the most media attention, Knox said that just as many injuries are associated with simply jumping inside inflatables.

So for every injury jumping inside, there is one related to a lofted bounce house. A 1:1 ratio. That's not that rare.

Knox spoke on WDUN’s Newsroom and said even a slight breeze in favorable weather conditions could be strong enough to topple a bounce house.

Honestly what you posted confirms what I have been writing.

BilboBargains

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We should ban drugs because they kill loads of peepo

LustyArgonianMana

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Yes let's give kids drugs, according to you

randombullet

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Just like pool drownings right?

todd_bonzalez

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Good luck with the liability lawsuit when a child drowns in your pool and you don't have a locked fence between the public road and the pool. They will take everything you own in that lawsuit, because you didn't take necessary safety measures to protect children.

The same should apply to a bounce house, not anchored properly, launching a child to a violent death.

Set up the law so that the responsible parties that failed can be sued into bankruptcy, or perhaps even jailed for public endangerment or manslaughter due to their negligence.

None of this "nothing we could do" BS. Bounce Houses shouldn't blow away except in the most extreme conditions, and it should be obvious under those conditions not to use a bounce house.