Bounce House Injury

Another Terrifying Bounce House Injury

Bounce House Injury | New York

Two boys, ages 5 and 6, were seriously injured last month in upstate New York after an inflatable bounce house went airborne.  The house reached a height of 20 feet before the children plummeted to the ground.  Reports say that the inflatable bounce house eventually reached a height of  nearly 100 feet.  Police said the two boys were still in the hospital Wednesday and are in stable condition.  One of the children, who suffered a head injury, was in a medically induced coma.  A boy was dropped onto a parked car and the other landed in the street. A 10-year-old girl was also tossed from the bounce house and suffered minor injuries.  Witnesses said the house had been staked to the ground.

Bounce House Injury | Colorado

Then, it happened again!  Two ten-year old Colorado children were injured over the weekend after an inflatable slide blew across a field during a Lacrosse tournament.  A strong gust of wind picked up the inflatable slide and carried it several hundred feet.  An AccuWeather.com Meteorologist said that at Centennial Airport, located about five miles east of Littleton, reported winds gusts of up to 41 mph around 2 p.m. MDT.

Bounce House Injury | New York

This is not a new trend.  Before these incidents, bodies began tumbling when a two-story red, white and blue inflatable slide went soaring into the air at a youth soccer tournament. Two other inflatables also flew off the ground that windy afternoon, causing young children to suffer bumps and bruises and critically injuring a mother who had an bounce house land on her.   Bystanders sprinted toward the airborne amusement rides, some using knives to stab the air-filled bounce house before anyone else was injured.

Bounce houses are blamed for thousands of injuries and at least five deaths in recent years yet many states do not regulate them.  Regulation of bounce houses is difficult because even though each state has their own rules regarding inflatables, in many cases individuals will rent bounce houses as a side business and some are not even insured.  And as evident by these videos, a business without experience can rent out inflatables that are just as fly by night as the company itself.  Although most states do not track injuries, the consumer product safety commission does.  More than 30,000 injuries have been reported over a five year period nationally were a result of bounce houses and slides.  Most of the injuries involved children and a trip to the emergency room.

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