Several children were injured during their school’s field day after an inflatable slide collapsed and tipped over.
It happened on Tuesday morning at Wyandanch Park in Suffolk County, New York, WNBC reported.
Police said the children, who are students at Lafrancis Hardiman Elementary School and are between 6 and 7 years old, were on the slide when it started to tip over, sending the children onto the tennis court below.
“They told us to get out and told us to sit down,” Jayson Armstrong, a second grader who was on the slide when it started to deflate, told WNYW.
Eleven people were treated at the scene and released to parents or guardians. Seven others were taken to area hospitals by ambulance. One student had a broken leg.
The other injuries were characterized as minor, according to WNYW.
Wyandanch School District superintendent Dr. Gina Talbert told WNBC in a statement that the students were participating in the school’s field day when the inflatable slide started to deflate.
The district is now investigating what caused the slide to lose air.
The “Today” show reported that authorities believe that the slide had uneven weight distribution.
Jaequan White with Jump Around Party Rentals, which provided the slide, said it was staked and sandbagged. He said someone should have been supervising the equipment’s use but that the school officials had declined to use the company’s employees, WNYW reported.
“They said they had teachers attend their event,” White told WNYW.
Children’s Health of Orange County said that between 2015 and 2019, almost 83,000 children were injured in accidents on inflatable slides and bounce houses, according to “Today.”
The National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine’s National Center for Biotechnology Information suggests limiting the use of bounce houses and similar equipment to children over the age of 6, making sure there is enough adult supervision, preventing the overcrowding of the bouncer and taking the children’s ages and weights into consideration.
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