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.
I recently saw one which had foot-long stakes driven at an angle. I wonder if that would be secure enough. I didn’t consider wind as a major threat at the time.
It also had a big pocket on the front that said in big letters that it just always contain the manual — empty, obviously.
They often have mesh (not bouncy) sides, and even landing from 20’ on your neck on the inflated surface seems like it could be deadly. How awful.
That had to be the magic-bullet of wind gusts. Tragic.