Wind-blown bounce house hurt child at Tri-Cities school event

A Pasco child was hurt when part of a bounce house flipped over in the wind at a school festival on Saturday.

Several bounce houses were set up at Barbara McClintock Elementary on Road 60 for Dia de Los Ninos, or Children’s Day, said Nellie Asay of Pasco.

Her granddaughter was in one of the bounce houses Saturday afternoon when a sudden wind gust picked it up, she said. As one end of the bounce house lifted, a couple of children near the entrance scrambled out.

But her granddaughter, Olivia Fleming, 9, was too far from the entrance to follow them, Asay said.

The wind flipped it over and Olivia was thrown to the ground on her head, she said.

Fleming’s father was nearby and was knocked down. Winds from 20 to 35 mph were reported at the Pasco airport Saturday, with gusts of up to 35 to 45 mph, said the National Weather Service.

Child taken to the hospital

People were yelling “There’s a child in there,” and one of them her out, her grandmother said.

“She was very confused. She was crying and shaking. She was in shock,” Asay said.

Olivia’s family took her home, but she remained confused. When she started throwing up, her family took her to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland.

A CAT scan showed no fracture but she suffered a severe concussion, Asay said.

Still, Olivia was back in her third grade classroom at Maya Angelou Elementary on Monday, with the school nurse keeping an eye on her.

No injury reported to school officials

Asay was at the festival with the family’s hotdog vendor cart and the wind was strong enough to lift the stand’s large umbrella, she said.

Administrators at McClintock Elementary confirmed that a section of a bounce house blew over after the Saturday event organized by the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.

They had received no reports of anyone being hurt, but plan to reach out to the family, said district spokesman Shane Edinger.

Asay said she and her family will be more careful in the future about using bounce houses when the wind is blowing. She also hopes that the experience alerts other families also to be cautious.

The Washington state Department of Labor and Industries regulates bounce houses and recommends that parents be mindful of whether a bounce house appears to be safe.

The operator should be restricting the number of people in the bounce house, and it should not appear to be overloaded or unstable.

The structure should be securely anchored.

Collapsing bounce houses also are a problem. If a blower inflating the ride is accidentally unplugged, the structure can collapse and possibly injure people.

This story was originally published April 29, 2019 at 6:20 PM.