u.k. bounce house death highlights danger of inflatable structures and wind

A 7-year-
Last week, the British little girl fell down a mile away and died when a gust of wind blew the Toy Story inflatable castle into the air.
The incident took place at a playground 30 miles north of London.
The danger of large inflatable outdoor game spaces being overlooked in the wind.
John Knox, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Georgia, has been actively investigating the issue since 2000, and has documented 64 bounce house accidents caused by wind power worldwide.
He said 271 people were injured and 10 were killed in the accidents.
Knox said that if these buildings are not safe, the wind can remove them at a speed of 20 to 30 miles per hour.
Accidents usually occur far away from the big storm, when a strong gust of wind suddenly appears.
\"These are all things that look like the weather is good, but all of a sudden you get into trouble,\" Knox said . \". These difficultiesto-
Knox said gusts are expected to often occur in the afternoon after the cold front passes, or to flow out of thunderstorms, possibly several miles from the parent storm.
He also saw that on other sunny days, very small cyclones like dust devils and water flowers had rotated and raised the bounce structure.
A gust of wind in the British accident last week was described as \"sudden \".
\"If it was a constant wind, they would shut down all the inflators,\" Ray Smith, a representative of the British performing Association, told the BBC.
Although Knox does not know the regulatory environment overseas, he said that better regulation in the United States can prevent such accidents.
\"In the United States, regulation of inflatable rides from one state to another is very uneven. S. ,” he says. “Some states [
North Carolina, for example]
Specify policies for bounce house Anchorage, operator requirements, owner requirements, signage, use wind speed thresholds, rent r terms, etc.
There are no policies in other countries.
\"In Britain, a man and a woman, 7-year-
According to the BBC, the elderly were arrested for \"serious manslaughter.
The allocation of responsibility in these cases is \"very complicated\", says Knox, but his research group \"emphasizes the risk of better educating resilient homes, especially in windy weather.
\"Last summer, Knox led a class in which the students set up a bounce room and tested different anchoring techniques, one with stakes and one with sandbags, to see
He is working on an academic paper based on the results of the study.
Wind is only a potential danger when children play in the bounce house.
Inflatable amusement equipment damage rate increased by 15-
According to a study published in the 1995 Journal of Pediatrics, folded in the United States from 2010 to 2012.
Nearly 65,000 injuries were reported during the study.
About one every 46 minutes.
Most injuries are broken, pulled and sprained by jumping and falling from the bounce structure.