bouncehouse castleHere's one bounce house party you'll be glad you and your kids missed. Two kids, a boy and a girl under 10, were seriously injured when a freak wind storm grabbed hold of the bouncy castle they were playing in, lifted it 15 feet in the air, over an 8- to 10-foot fence, across three lanes of traffic on a busy highway, and then stopped on the highway median.

Can you even imagine such a thing? Those poor parents who watched that thing fly away ...

Thank goodness probably due to its inflatable nature and some strategic highway drivers that the kids were both taken to the hospital with serious but non-life-threatening injuries. This accident had the potential to be so much worse.

It was bad enough a few months ago when wind blew a bounce house 110 feet in the air with kids inside and dumped one child out onto a rooftop. The girl suffered minor head injuries in that case, but kids could be gravely injured in such a high-speed tussle, not to mention suffocate should the large inflatable object deflate, trapping them inside. Of course, the highway landing in this newest case adds a whole other scary element to this freak accident. In both incidents, ties secured the bounce houses to the ground but didn't hold up against the strength of the crazy gusts.

I don't know. Once is a freak accident but twice! I think bounce house rental companies need to look into some better ways of securing these things -- perhaps to something besides the ground, which can be damp or soft.

Or, you know, let's just go pop them all and call it a day.

Does this story freak you out about bounce house safety?



Image via Todd Huffman/Flickr