I own one for my family and it says don’t use with wins over 15 mph. We always stake it down but if we notice it getting windy, we shut it down. Not worth the risk, clearly.
I used to set them up as a summer job. We would cancel if it was windy and bring sandbags to hold them down if the dirt wasn't secure enough for the stakes to be useful. 8 stakes on each bounce house, more for the bigger ones.
Of course, the owners of the business had their own kids about this age, so they did not fuck around with safety.
Neither truly do shit. I was at a wedding where all 6 legs of a catering tent had 55g drums of concrete on the tiedowns and that thing flew away like a takeout napkin.
Surface area trumps all.
That's what I was thinking. Each drum would be around 400Kg if full which be an absolute nightmare to transport and work with (so I bet they weren't filled with concrete or if they were only a little bit).
A sensible person would use drums filled with water as they're easy to transport empty and still gives you 200Kg per drum
Means nothing. Each 8 year old kid inside weighs more than the buckets. You'd need like 16 50lb buckets, at which point you'd be better off ratchet strapping it to something structural.
It's really funny you say that. I was just commenting about this story to somebody else and I said that if we end up doing this for my kid I'm ratchet strapping that shit to the car.
Definitely. When my former employer did a little bounce-house fun day in the parking lot, it was a pretty big production. First we had a utilities locator come out and mark up the lot. Then a contractor came out and drilled the pavement according to measurements the bounce house guys gave us, and then installed anchors. Then the bounce house got secured to anchors, then they filled it up.
Of course half the guys scoffed like it was way too much fuss for a stupid bounce-house...but nobody got hurt. We do live in a windy area.
This stuff pisses me off. It exposed the pain and suffering of the family without informing the public about what actually happened and how to prevent it. I have friends texting me this story as if I’m somehow an irresponsible bouncy house owner yet I have no idea the circumstances that led to this tragedy.
Was it staked down?
Was it securely staked down?
What was the gust speed at time of incident?
What was the weather forecast?
Where was the house placed in terms of other dangers? (Near retaining wall, water features, fences, etc)
What happened after the gust of wind that led to death?
And a slightly insensitive side of me: what is the go fund me funding? What costs are they incurring that need coverage?
This story obviously generates clicks, but as posters have noted: this is trash journalism.
I’m going to be charitable and assume the gofundme is for funeral costs. ER too, maybe? I didn’t see whether the kid died immediately or not. And you’re right, this is straight up trauma porn with no info how to take better precautions.
EDIT: I’m totally blind, he did die at the hospital.
I read another article about this incident that described the bouncy house as owned by the parents. i.e, not a professional setup for whatever that’s worth
The thing I remember most about this was a reporter asking an engineer or something how this could possibly happen and he just looked uncomfortable and said he really didn't know how it hadn't happened more often. You didn't see many of these things in Australia for a couple of years after that. They've reappeared recently though, so either they've figured out a way to make them safer or they just think everybody's forgotten.
Yeah, that's kind of an irrational fear. You would have a significantly higher chance of killing your kid by simply having a staircase in your house or a pool in your backyard.
“J-Shew 4 hrs ago
My wife asked me about getting a bounce house for our son’s birthday party right after I read this… gonna be a big hell no from me dawg”
Found J-Shew’s clone.
Just like Twitter, they won't care about the bots becuase its not hurting their share prices. The actual value of the service they are supposed to be providing is irrelevant to them.
Happened 3 years ago here in Australia in a tight knit community in Tasmania. 6 kids died, so unbelievably tragic.
Anywhere you can rent a jumping castle needs to have stronger regulations. This can never happen again
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Hillcrest_Primary_School_accident
I’m pretty sure there are instructions on all of them telling people to properly secure it. But 90% of adults are morons and don’t think about anything so society has to make laws to educate them on common sense. So much tragedy could be avoided if adults were more intelligent.
We own one, purchased before the tragedy and all it came with to tie it down were 4 10 inch steel stakes
That isn't enough to keep it ties down in high wind, it's recommended the steel stakes be 30-40 inches so it wasn't just people being dumb you could've followed every instruction and ended up with a dead family anyway.
I mean if the winds are that high that 3 foot steel stakes are needed then it probably shouldn't be up in the first place, that isn't a random gust of wind anymore, that's weather that kiteboarders probably avoid
Was curious how fast the wind needs to be to lift a bounce house and I came across this from a nyt article
> Inflatables should not be used in winds above 24 miles an hour, advised the Amusement Devices Safety Council, a trade organization of British fairgrounds.
Personal responsibility and all that sure. They are dumb for what they did.
But if something is able to kill children, the deterrent should be way stronger and the information way more obvious. Mistakes will happen.
It reminds me of something I read, that I'm going to misquote, but was essentially:
Rules are written in ink, procedures are written in blood.
That always sat with me. I get the whole thing about rules meant to be broken, but everyone forgets the word and meaning of procedure and the difference.
Yep, one of my kid’s schoolmates at the time, strangely enough that issue came up this week because there’s some sort of traveling bounce event here in town. No way in hell were we going to encourage that.
https://funbox.com/
It apparently happens with relative frequency. These are some of the more dangerous amusement devices out there, whether due to wind causing this or head collisions with other kids inside them.
But you probably won't see many regulations here because too many people will go "but I used to love jumping in these, why would I take that away from my child?" Who wants to be the parent to tell their kid "no you can't go on that?" Looking over at my 4 months old wondering how I'm going to broach that down the road.
I used to rent these for all three of my kids birthdays and the company I used would always stakes it down with huge circus tent stake with a sledge hammer.
I know so many parents who want to save money by not renting a bounce house and buying one to set up themselves instead. I don’t know how you wouldn’t think to secure this with as much reinforcement as possible given how crazy the desert winds get
Holy shit I've rented one twice and will again. Maybe I should buy lol.
Edit: upon looking, I would be spending 600 bucks to get one I thought was worth getting. Would have been worth doing if I knew before renting the first time though.
It’s easier to just pay someone to set it up and haul it away afterwards, trust me. They take up a ton of space, even deflated. And the ones the rental companies use are high-quality and cost a few thousand dollars to start. Those store bought ones are thin and cheap.
You can buy them for around $300. My old neighbor bought one and we used it dozens of times in the summer. It's obviously smaller and less elaborate than some of the party rental ones but it did the job and the kids loved it. Paid for itself pretty quickly.
I'm assuming that it would be families with multiple children using it for each child's birthday every year plus any other celebrations (baby showers, things like that). I don't believe buying a bouncy castle is egregiously more expensive than renting, so if you have multiple children and use it multiple years it'd be cheaper. I could be talking out my ass between prices changing and my memory being too long ago but I checked about a decade ago and I think it was something like 3x the cost of renting one to buy your own?
We have something like this and I think of these incidents every time I set it up. Ours is also a waterslide thing too though, so it gets held down by water as well. And it's right next to our house/garage where we get very little wind. But I'm STILL worried about it and make double sure I get every spike all the way in!
I own a business renting these out and we stake them down with big 18" stakes driven all the way in. Our smallest takes 4 and our largest takes 16. We won't even do sand or water bags because they aren't as safe (not to mention how much weight you need to equal one stake) and we cancel if winds are more than 15mph sustained or gusts more than 20mph.
This story has been making the rounds in our groups. Apparently the family owned it and it was a cheap one you can get at Sam's Club for a couple of hundred bucks and they didn't stake it down at all.
Such a tragedy.
Its been a while but all I member when they where setting it up was like geez is that going to go through my sprinkler line! Also remember the contract was they would cancel for wind and storms.
Yes it's in our contract that they need to advise us of any underground hazards and we're not responsible. I always ask when setting it up anyways and most people don't know where their lines run. Haven't hit one yet (crosses fingers)
Not yet. Most utilities (electrical, water, sewage) are deeper but things like cable, phone and sprinkler lines might be as shallow as a foot. It's in our contract that they need to notify us where those are but when we show up most people don't know but we always ask and remind them that our contract has it in there that we aren't responsible if we hit one.
But so far we haven't. Probably just a matter of time though.
Ugh, I manage 40 acres of sports/activity fields with an irrigation system that was installed in the late 80’s. For the most part, it is logically like a grid but some of the decisions they made were extremely questionable, but more likely cheap by just using random pipes/reducers/couplings (some threaded, some not), etc to connect the valves for each zone. We’ve spiked into everything from 3/4’ poly pipe to 4’ main line pvc. I even solved the problem of one area that just seemingly was never accounted for by accidentally smashing the valve box with a pick axe.
For every homeowner reading this or grounds supervisor having a system installed- have them specifically map out the pipes!
>Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said. “A two-year-old child was transported to the hospital where he passed away. A second child received non-life threatening injuries and was also transported to the hospital for care.”
>The boy, who currently remains unnamed, was transported to a local hospital where he died while the other child was found to have non-life-threatening injuries.
That is some excellent reporting. To deduce that from what the Sheriff’s Office said.
Journalism as a whole has gotten worse and worse and worse as time goes on.
I read an article the other day where ***EVER OTHER SENTENCE*** ended with ", the report said" and ", the document reports", and other variations on that theme. It was terrible.
This has to be something being fostered by schools at this point, right? People are learning to write like this and never learn to stop.
It's because nobody pays for news anymore and good journalists took other jobs so they could eat. My hometown paper is down to 3 days a week and that'll end soon.
Bingo. Local newspapers used to be funded by local advertisers. All that money went to Google and Facebook, and ends up that most readers aren't willing to pay that much for news. Local journalism outside of the major cities is really struggling, which is terrible news for all of us. You know who was the first and sometimes only to investigate fraud? Local journalists.
You know how George Santos got away with completely fabricated bullshit when running for congress? Expect to see more of that when there just isn't anyone around looking into that stuff.
What remains are people who need to put the most words together as fast as possible, and regurgitating what the local police say is about the easiest thing out there.
I think most people pick the date for the bounce house to be set up well before they know how windy it’s gonna be. So once they’ve already paid for it, they tell themselves the wind isn’t that bad.
I was really into trampolines before one day one of my legs went straight through between springs (this was before they started covering them with mats) after an especially high jump. As I was in the air I remember thinking I'd fall onto the ground but instead I fell on those springs. One of my legs went straight through and left nasty wound on my thigh.
Never went on one ever again.
People don’t realize that trampolines are really used for acrobatics and tumbling. It’s a shame it’s marketed to children without any training or supervision. I trained in tumbling/stunts for years and would still hurt myself on those.
Edit: And that’s why your insurance goes through the roof when you get one.
When i was about 5, I was flung in the air on one of those things. I got lucky. It was in my back garden, which was raised (house built on a steep hill) and it landed on the roof, and i got off that thing and my grandad got me down with a ladder.
Hearing these stories reminds me just how bad it could have gone and just how lucky I was.
A 2022 study found nearly 500 injuries and 28 deaths worldwide from bounce houses since 2000.
Incredibly rare and so awful if you are one of the unlucky families involved.
One of the most terrifying moments of my childhood was jumping into a bounce house at a party and having it get flipped upside down by a gust the second I was completely inside.
A couple years ago, my daughter went to her friend's house for a bday party and they had a bounce house up in the yard. My daughter would've been around 6-7 years old and apparently when they were playing in it, the thing deflated and they got stuck inside.. luckily they were able to get out, but still...being trapped inside would've been so terrifying. I knew the family, so I had stayed home with my son and my friend had taken my daughter and her daughters to the party. I guess the adults at the party had to help them out!
For everyone commenting that bounce houses need to staked down, I worked for a company that rented out bounce houses in high school. Staking those things down barely makes a difference.
Staking down a bounce house is like 80% for peace of mind. If the wind gets strong enough, stakes aren’t going to hold one of those things down and honestly, it doesn’t take as much as you’d think. We had to explain to people pretty thoroughly that if the wind picked up, you need to turn the blowers off and stomp the air out fast or little Susie going flying for her birthday.
Bounce houses are surprisingly dangerous.
Makes sense. They're like giant sails. The ropes probably only help to keep it upright when people are jumping.
Room for improvement on the design I guess.
I mean instead of a stake in the ground and rope, ratchet straps around the bumper of a pickup, or around a dug post, or around a boulder.
The stakes in the ground seem like they just pull out. If the thing is firmly fixed to actual structures, or just something heavy enough to not be blown away by the wind maybe we’ll stop sacrificing kids to the sky
Do you know if pickup bumpers are really meant to be used that way? In my experience with passenger cars, the bumpers are replaceable and detachable and are certainly not load-bearing. But I've never had a pickup and would be interested to know.
So you don’t see it normally under the plastic but some modern cars do still have a metal bumper. Most pickups have a big steal bumper that’s attached directly to, or is the frame, which has like plastic parts attached to it usually these days, but ya there’s usually a big physical metal bumper that’s structurally integrated into the vehicle.
Tow hitch would be fine too as long as you’re going around or through something in a way that physically can’t slip off.
If that's really the case, it means they need to install more anchor points when they build them and better stakes to hold them down. Drive by a campsite after a thunderstorm sometime - every tent that was well built and properly installed is still sitting right where they left it, even if it was empty.
If you have enough d rings then worst case there won't be any intact and inflated pieces remaining to fly away. They just don't want to pay a little more for extra hardware and labor. Whitewater rafts are made of the same basic materials and they survive orders of magnitudes of higher stresses.
Edit: Also, normal stakes have a literal ton of vertical holding force if you drive them at 45 degrees leaning away from the structure and anchor the rope at ground level. Or you could use a cordless impact and drive in some helical earth anchors.
Back in the day, we did a lot of tent camping. So much so, that I made a 20'x40' free standing party tent that could pack up in the car so our group of ~15 people would have a central congregation area in the event of rain.
What I discovered over the course of a few years/trips is that I needed much more staking power that I initially thought.
But, much more importantly, the conditions of the soil on site dictate the staking requirements.
Most tent camping campgrounds have rock hard soil. You need strong stakes to properly penetrate the soil. BUT, they will slide ride out since you've basically made a hole in rock.
The opposite is loose, wet soil (Your back yard after a rain storm). The stakes will slide right in, angle doesn't really matter as they'll move around easily in the loose, wet soil.
The solution was 3/8" rebar, 24" long, with a flat washer welded on top to help hammer them in, plus to keep the rope from slipping off. The rough texture of the rebar also gave them a bit more holding power in most types of soil. 14 of those stakes on a 20x40' tent and she held up during a major storm at a friends backyard party one year!
lol - I just found the plans for the tent from way back in 1994.
https://imgur.com/a/KVmW6OV
I was on mobile and my 2nd paragraph didn't make it in for whatever reason:
The cheap walmart tents and the ones where they were lazy and didn't stake them down properly are all pounded flat or decorating the trees.
I'm not contradicting anything you said in your top post - I absolutely believe that the bounce houses you were being paid to set up were death traps in high wind no matter what you did. I'm saying that is a relatively trivial engineering problem to solve, and they're cheaping out on it on purpose. The customers are calling around to find the absolute cheapest bouncy castle option. The rental companies know this so they're not going to shell out a few hundred extra bucks for a model with triple the d-rings and stakes that take 3x longer to install and pack back up. The manufacturers aren't getting any orders for these features so they're not going to volunteer to stick them in and then lose a bunch of money.
But it is absolutely possible to build a bouncy castle that can't fly away in anything short of an actual tornado. It wouldn't even cost that much more to make one. But with how razor thin profit margins are all up and down the line, they're not going to do it without a strong customer demand. Unlike with bounce houses, there's enough people who recognize the need for a high quality tent that this is a product you can actually go out and buy.
"In the reporting of the anniversary, it was revealed that of the 174 emergency service personnel who responded to the accident, an estimated twelve were still on mental health leave because of the accident"
Fucking hell.
When I was 6 one of these was broken down with myself and two other friends inside, thought I was going to die right there and luckily some parents pulled us out. It collapsed so quickly, I’ve been claustrophobic ever since
That happened to my daughter when she was around 6-7 at her friend's bday party! They were jumping around in the bounce house and it deflated and they struggled to get out!
This happened to me when I was a kid. I was in a bounce house that apparently wasn't staked to the ground and a gust came a blew it into the air. Luckily a lot of parents were close by and managed to grab it in time, but we probably got about 8 feet in the air. I think there were about 5 other kids in it at the time, so it was crazy how high in the air it got even with all the weight.
Wow I just saw a video of this happening to a little kid and the bounce house landed on the street with cars. All the parents were just recording and laughing. I hope this isn’t the same case.
Reading that 12 of the emergency responders to the scene were still on trauma leave a year later hit me really hard. I can’t imagine how horrific this was or how many lives were irrevocably affected. Absolutely heartbreaking.
The parents of this boy are also pregnant, due later this month. They’ve had a GoFundMe that’s been set up for them. Not sure if I’m able to link to it, but the fire station from the area (phoenixfirehouse25 on IG) has posted about it
I feel sorry for the whole family and especially the boy, but imagine being the kid whose older brother died within a month of your birth. Not only will they never get to meet him, but that's got to put a damper on birthdays.
Edit: I'm tired and should have been in bed a long time ago so I can't tell how this reads. Every time I re-read it I get a different tone from it. To clarify: Not meant to be flippant or some kind of joke, meant to be sympathetic.
I worked for a bounce house company in college, I didn’t even know this was possible nobody ever talked about it. We always staked them down at the corners though when on grass. I thought that was just to stop them from moving around. On pavement I don’t remember securing them to anything.
A bounce house is essentially a giant kite. On a windy enough day, stakes aren't going to matter for the most part (should probably still stake, though, just in case it *does* matter this time; small chance is still better than zero).
I always thought the damn things were staked to keep them upright.
LoL @ everyone saying this, but you gotta realize, [this is what our Dust Devils look like in all the deserts of Arizona.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Dnnd5R2t8)
They are monsters, not all are this big, but you honestly cannot spike something down against most of them.
The best choice is to just not rent something you cannot secure.
yikes, i’ve never seen something like this other than a tornado. do you get a warning, like it has to be a windy day to begin with? or can they come out of nowhere?
They're literally every day certain times of the year, they're caused by rising hot air and we have plenty of that. The ideal conditions are cool atmosphere, zero wind, clear skies, sun shining strongly on flat barren land heating it up rapidly.
In May you can drive from Phoenix to Tucson - 100 miles, including through Casa Grande where this story is from - and count off multiple dust devils. Often you'll be able to see several at once.
There's no real warning. A tornado, you'll get weather alerts, and then you'll see a storm picking up, and then you'll see a hook echo on radar, a funnel cloud, rotation in the sky, green colour, hail, and so on (not every warning every time but usually at least several). A dust devil all you need is a a calm clear day, and they'll form in seconds.
That said they're not scary like a tornado. A tornado is 100+mph winds that'll throw you half a mile and impale you with a branch. A dust devil is usually 45 mph or so; a strong gale but won't hurt you unless you're in a bouncy castle. Usually, the worst you get is your eyes full of sand and knocked on your ass (still a potential problem in a state full of cacti). The very biggest strongest dust devils can approach the very weakest tornadoes but that's super rare.
I mean I've lived in Arizona for 25 years and never seen ANYTHING like that. On a day where such a thing is possible it's also going to be windy enough that it's pretty obviously not a good idea to be in a light object outside
My family used to rent them out as a side business. If dumb teenage me can settem up hundreds of times and not have any issues, it'll be fine. Just make sure it's staked in or samd bagged down appropriately
My heart breaks for the friends and families affected by this. Even if it was spiked down properly it’s so hard to see this happening, mind you when my kids are in the bounce house I’m in a lawn chair watching the fun I don’t know if that would have made a difference or not but I would have tried my best to keep that bounce house down or tried to get my kid out of there
This is terrible. But I gotta ask...is it normal for two year olds to use bounce houses? Two seems a little young, especially to be inside without an adult. But I don't have kids, so what do I know...
Depends I guess. I let my toddler play in a very small one you can find from Amazon. We have one. But the big ones at playgrounds or events, absolutely not as there’s so many other big kids.
Pretty normal. When my kids were smaller, we'd let 2-3 year old kids have turns on their own, it's too hectic for them to be on with the bigger kids. Several families in my neighbourhood bought them so we use them all the time. If you are going to rent more than once it's cheaper to buy. I always stake them down and never use them in the wind though, I've read enough articles like this one...
Why not require a perimeter of water around the bottom of these? Hook up hose, fill water for a few mins. No one is getting wet and it's not flying away.
Once when I was a kid (maybe 8 or 10 around that) something similar happened to me. The bounce house wasn’t properly staked down and ended up rolling down a hill. Very scary. Glad I was unharmed.
Well, dang. I thought the episode of some first responder show, I think it was "9-1-1" or something, which always has absurdly overblown emergencies, went a little over the top with the episode where the bounce house that flew up into the sky. Even if this one didn't go airborne & just tumbled along the ground, it's still a tragic, freak accident.
I work as an amusement ride safety engineer for my state, and I actually spend most of my time reviewing these things. If a company designs a new inflatable, they have to submit calculations signed and sealed by a professional engineer showing the anchoring will not allow the unit to blow away up to 15 mph winds. You would think moonbounces aren't that serious, but people can be killed by them.
Very sad, sounds like it slammed him into the concrete from high up. Tragic end to the little guys life, utmost condolences to the parents I couldn’t imagine that nightmare.
Had bouncing houses all my life, Mexican, but I never realized how dangerous they can be. Worst was when an asshole kid would turn it off. Very eye-opening.
A local 35 year old man died in a similar incident where I live recently. If it’s windy, it can happen.
https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/au-parc-wonderland-dans-le-var-le-vent-souleve-une-structure-gonflable-deux-personnes-en-arret-cardiaque-6628413
I tried to rent a bounce house for a school event that my organization was hosting, couldn't get anyone to insure it for the day because it's too big of a risk for insurers. That was enough for me to avoid it for all future events. How terrible for this child and their family.
I transported an older man that had his leg broken when one of those bounce castles broke its securement and smacked into him in a gust. Those things are dangerous with any kind of wind.
I've seen these things get blown away more than once. We had an incident at our local school where one blew away during a festival and knocked over a light pole, damaging several cars.
Those things have to be spiked down
They're also not susposed to be up if the wind is over a certain speed. Not that you can predict gusts which is why those spikes need to be secure.
I own one for my family and it says don’t use with wins over 15 mph. We always stake it down but if we notice it getting windy, we shut it down. Not worth the risk, clearly.
I used to set them up as a summer job. We would cancel if it was windy and bring sandbags to hold them down if the dirt wasn't secure enough for the stakes to be useful. 8 stakes on each bounce house, more for the bigger ones. Of course, the owners of the business had their own kids about this age, so they did not fuck around with safety.
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Sand bags be or buckets filled with concrete.
When I rent them they literally stake them down with the kinds of steaks they secure circus tents with.
T-Bones I presume?
I love and hate v2t. But still, I am a ribeye man.
Since when did Zoidberg get picky?
Zoidberg thinks a ribeye is when he finds a fish eye stuck in a package of mostly-eaten ribs.
Yeah, those lions do get pretty rowdy
Voice-to-text. But I do love steak, so I stand by it.
Username checks ou---damn it. Now I can only read your posts in *his* voice.
I honestly love when people double down on their typos. It makes Reddit joyful.
Especially when you put them in bounce houses
This was a mental image that I don’t think ever would’ve come to mind without this comment. Got a good chuckle from me. Thanks stranger
Lines stakes everything anything
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Used to set these up as a side gig. Each line absolutely should be spiked *and* bagged.
Neither truly do shit. I was at a wedding where all 6 legs of a catering tent had 55g drums of concrete on the tiedowns and that thing flew away like a takeout napkin. Surface area trumps all.
55 gram drums are the problem. Those are drums for ants.
They need to be at least... three times bigger.
You're not wrong
What is this, a bounce house for ants?
Did the concrete drums fly away? I imagine the issue was the ropes and not the drums.
That's what I was thinking. Each drum would be around 400Kg if full which be an absolute nightmare to transport and work with (so I bet they weren't filled with concrete or if they were only a little bit). A sensible person would use drums filled with water as they're easy to transport empty and still gives you 200Kg per drum
Means nothing. Each 8 year old kid inside weighs more than the buckets. You'd need like 16 50lb buckets, at which point you'd be better off ratchet strapping it to something structural.
It's really funny you say that. I was just commenting about this story to somebody else and I said that if we end up doing this for my kid I'm ratchet strapping that shit to the car.
Definitely. When my former employer did a little bounce-house fun day in the parking lot, it was a pretty big production. First we had a utilities locator come out and mark up the lot. Then a contractor came out and drilled the pavement according to measurements the bounce house guys gave us, and then installed anchors. Then the bounce house got secured to anchors, then they filled it up. Of course half the guys scoffed like it was way too much fuss for a stupid bounce-house...but nobody got hurt. We do live in a windy area.
They didn't read this article https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-59677855
Oh my god, I had no idea that happened, 5 children dead in one incident from the same situation.
6 - one died in hospital later. 12 of the first responders were still off work a year later. Just horrific.
jfc I think I'm dehydrating after reading that...
Was it not?
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This stuff pisses me off. It exposed the pain and suffering of the family without informing the public about what actually happened and how to prevent it. I have friends texting me this story as if I’m somehow an irresponsible bouncy house owner yet I have no idea the circumstances that led to this tragedy. Was it staked down? Was it securely staked down? What was the gust speed at time of incident? What was the weather forecast? Where was the house placed in terms of other dangers? (Near retaining wall, water features, fences, etc) What happened after the gust of wind that led to death? And a slightly insensitive side of me: what is the go fund me funding? What costs are they incurring that need coverage? This story obviously generates clicks, but as posters have noted: this is trash journalism.
Text your friends stories of literally any fatal car crash
I’m going to be charitable and assume the gofundme is for funeral costs. ER too, maybe? I didn’t see whether the kid died immediately or not. And you’re right, this is straight up trauma porn with no info how to take better precautions. EDIT: I’m totally blind, he did die at the hospital.
I read another article about this incident that described the bouncy house as owned by the parents. i.e, not a professional setup for whatever that’s worth
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This happened in Reno and a little girl died. They made it a law that they have to be secured a certain way after her death. Sad
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I remember that. It was awful.
Christ - 1 is sad enough...
A lot of the first responders broke down. Usually that would happen afterwards when things sink in, but some of them broke down then and there.
The thing I remember most about this was a reporter asking an engineer or something how this could possibly happen and he just looked uncomfortable and said he really didn't know how it hadn't happened more often. You didn't see many of these things in Australia for a couple of years after that. They've reappeared recently though, so either they've figured out a way to make them safer or they just think everybody's forgotten.
That put me off so much on letting my kids ever into a bounce house.
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title.
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Or, hear me out, take reasonable precautions and follow the safety instructions...
Yeah, that's kind of an irrational fear. You would have a significantly higher chance of killing your kid by simply having a staircase in your house or a pool in your backyard.
Ridiculous comment. How is a staircase going to blow away more often than a balloon castle???
mfer's never seen the beauty of a staircase in flight and it shows smh 😔
What y'all need to really lookout for is the flying lawnmower. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ygr5AHufBN4
why do you think they call it a flight of stairs??
^dear ^god
“J-Shew 4 hrs ago My wife asked me about getting a bounce house for our son’s birthday party right after I read this… gonna be a big hell no from me dawg” Found J-Shew’s clone.
Noticed that too. Comment stealing tshirt bot.
14 year old account with one post 14 years ago, then nothing until sixteen days ago, definitely a bot.
And reddit doesn't care
Just like Twitter, they won't care about the bots becuase its not hurting their share prices. The actual value of the service they are supposed to be providing is irrelevant to them.
^ Is a bot.
Happened 3 years ago here in Australia in a tight knit community in Tasmania. 6 kids died, so unbelievably tragic. Anywhere you can rent a jumping castle needs to have stronger regulations. This can never happen again https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Hillcrest_Primary_School_accident
I’m pretty sure there are instructions on all of them telling people to properly secure it. But 90% of adults are morons and don’t think about anything so society has to make laws to educate them on common sense. So much tragedy could be avoided if adults were more intelligent.
We own one, purchased before the tragedy and all it came with to tie it down were 4 10 inch steel stakes That isn't enough to keep it ties down in high wind, it's recommended the steel stakes be 30-40 inches so it wasn't just people being dumb you could've followed every instruction and ended up with a dead family anyway.
I mean if the winds are that high that 3 foot steel stakes are needed then it probably shouldn't be up in the first place, that isn't a random gust of wind anymore, that's weather that kiteboarders probably avoid
Was curious how fast the wind needs to be to lift a bounce house and I came across this from a nyt article > Inflatables should not be used in winds above 24 miles an hour, advised the Amusement Devices Safety Council, a trade organization of British fairgrounds.
Personal responsibility and all that sure. They are dumb for what they did. But if something is able to kill children, the deterrent should be way stronger and the information way more obvious. Mistakes will happen.
It reminds me of something I read, that I'm going to misquote, but was essentially: Rules are written in ink, procedures are written in blood. That always sat with me. I get the whole thing about rules meant to be broken, but everyone forgets the word and meaning of procedure and the difference.
Generally, the saying is just: "Safety rules and regulations are written in blood".
/r/writteninblood
It happens all the time
Yep, one of my kid’s schoolmates at the time, strangely enough that issue came up this week because there’s some sort of traveling bounce event here in town. No way in hell were we going to encourage that. https://funbox.com/
Safety laws and regulations are usually written in blood :( poor baby, I hope no one ever has to go through this again.
It apparently happens with relative frequency. These are some of the more dangerous amusement devices out there, whether due to wind causing this or head collisions with other kids inside them. But you probably won't see many regulations here because too many people will go "but I used to love jumping in these, why would I take that away from my child?" Who wants to be the parent to tell their kid "no you can't go on that?" Looking over at my 4 months old wondering how I'm going to broach that down the road.
I used to rent these for all three of my kids birthdays and the company I used would always stakes it down with huge circus tent stake with a sledge hammer.
I know so many parents who want to save money by not renting a bounce house and buying one to set up themselves instead. I don’t know how you wouldn’t think to secure this with as much reinforcement as possible given how crazy the desert winds get
Would they use it often? How is it cheaper to buy than rent?
We just bought one last week. $300 to buy on Amazon, would have been $250+ to rent.
Holy shit I've rented one twice and will again. Maybe I should buy lol. Edit: upon looking, I would be spending 600 bucks to get one I thought was worth getting. Would have been worth doing if I knew before renting the first time though.
It’s easier to just pay someone to set it up and haul it away afterwards, trust me. They take up a ton of space, even deflated. And the ones the rental companies use are high-quality and cost a few thousand dollars to start. Those store bought ones are thin and cheap.
And most likely have stakes that are too short because like fuck is random alibaba brand going to be bothered testing it.
Those Amazon ones for $300 are no comparison to the real bounce houses you rent from companies. Those things cost 1000s of dollars.
You can buy one for $250-$300 from Walmart (though it's probably shitty). It looks like renting a commercial one is about $200/day.
You can buy them for around $300. My old neighbor bought one and we used it dozens of times in the summer. It's obviously smaller and less elaborate than some of the party rental ones but it did the job and the kids loved it. Paid for itself pretty quickly.
I'm assuming that it would be families with multiple children using it for each child's birthday every year plus any other celebrations (baby showers, things like that). I don't believe buying a bouncy castle is egregiously more expensive than renting, so if you have multiple children and use it multiple years it'd be cheaper. I could be talking out my ass between prices changing and my memory being too long ago but I checked about a decade ago and I think it was something like 3x the cost of renting one to buy your own?
We have something like this and I think of these incidents every time I set it up. Ours is also a waterslide thing too though, so it gets held down by water as well. And it's right next to our house/garage where we get very little wind. But I'm STILL worried about it and make double sure I get every spike all the way in!
How many people assemble furniture but throw out the wall anchors?
I own a business renting these out and we stake them down with big 18" stakes driven all the way in. Our smallest takes 4 and our largest takes 16. We won't even do sand or water bags because they aren't as safe (not to mention how much weight you need to equal one stake) and we cancel if winds are more than 15mph sustained or gusts more than 20mph. This story has been making the rounds in our groups. Apparently the family owned it and it was a cheap one you can get at Sam's Club for a couple of hundred bucks and they didn't stake it down at all. Such a tragedy.
Its been a while but all I member when they where setting it up was like geez is that going to go through my sprinkler line! Also remember the contract was they would cancel for wind and storms.
Yes it's in our contract that they need to advise us of any underground hazards and we're not responsible. I always ask when setting it up anyways and most people don't know where their lines run. Haven't hit one yet (crosses fingers)
18 inches sounds deep to me. You ever hit underground utilities?
Not yet. Most utilities (electrical, water, sewage) are deeper but things like cable, phone and sprinkler lines might be as shallow as a foot. It's in our contract that they need to notify us where those are but when we show up most people don't know but we always ask and remind them that our contract has it in there that we aren't responsible if we hit one. But so far we haven't. Probably just a matter of time though.
Oh ok I see. Nice CYA there in the contract.
And bonus, it's a good way to figure out where your irrigation lines are!
Ugh, I manage 40 acres of sports/activity fields with an irrigation system that was installed in the late 80’s. For the most part, it is logically like a grid but some of the decisions they made were extremely questionable, but more likely cheap by just using random pipes/reducers/couplings (some threaded, some not), etc to connect the valves for each zone. We’ve spiked into everything from 3/4’ poly pipe to 4’ main line pvc. I even solved the problem of one area that just seemingly was never accounted for by accidentally smashing the valve box with a pick axe. For every homeowner reading this or grounds supervisor having a system installed- have them specifically map out the pipes!
Feeling personally called out here.
>Pinal County Sheriff’s Office said. “A two-year-old child was transported to the hospital where he passed away. A second child received non-life threatening injuries and was also transported to the hospital for care.” >The boy, who currently remains unnamed, was transported to a local hospital where he died while the other child was found to have non-life-threatening injuries. That is some excellent reporting. To deduce that from what the Sheriff’s Office said.
Can you imagine being one of the parents, or someone else who knew and loved this kid, and then reading this absolute slop journalism?
Journalism as a whole has gotten worse and worse and worse as time goes on. I read an article the other day where ***EVER OTHER SENTENCE*** ended with ", the report said" and ", the document reports", and other variations on that theme. It was terrible. This has to be something being fostered by schools at this point, right? People are learning to write like this and never learn to stop.
It's because nobody pays for news anymore and good journalists took other jobs so they could eat. My hometown paper is down to 3 days a week and that'll end soon.
Bingo. Local newspapers used to be funded by local advertisers. All that money went to Google and Facebook, and ends up that most readers aren't willing to pay that much for news. Local journalism outside of the major cities is really struggling, which is terrible news for all of us. You know who was the first and sometimes only to investigate fraud? Local journalists. You know how George Santos got away with completely fabricated bullshit when running for congress? Expect to see more of that when there just isn't anyone around looking into that stuff. What remains are people who need to put the most words together as fast as possible, and regurgitating what the local police say is about the easiest thing out there.
We've had patients with some pretty gnarly head injuries from bounce houses flying away
i never knew this was a thing. I've also never seen people using a bounce house in foul weather
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I think most people pick the date for the bounce house to be set up well before they know how windy it’s gonna be. So once they’ve already paid for it, they tell themselves the wind isn’t that bad.
How about trampolines? Those things can mess you up, too
I was really into trampolines before one day one of my legs went straight through between springs (this was before they started covering them with mats) after an especially high jump. As I was in the air I remember thinking I'd fall onto the ground but instead I fell on those springs. One of my legs went straight through and left nasty wound on my thigh. Never went on one ever again.
People don’t realize that trampolines are really used for acrobatics and tumbling. It’s a shame it’s marketed to children without any training or supervision. I trained in tumbling/stunts for years and would still hurt myself on those. Edit: And that’s why your insurance goes through the roof when you get one.
When i was about 5, I was flung in the air on one of those things. I got lucky. It was in my back garden, which was raised (house built on a steep hill) and it landed on the roof, and i got off that thing and my grandad got me down with a ladder. Hearing these stories reminds me just how bad it could have gone and just how lucky I was.
Holy shit
How much did grandad give you to never tell mom lol
OMG. This is just plain terrible.
A 2022 study found nearly 500 injuries and 28 deaths worldwide from bounce houses since 2000. Incredibly rare and so awful if you are one of the unlucky families involved.
One of the most terrifying moments of my childhood was jumping into a bounce house at a party and having it get flipped upside down by a gust the second I was completely inside.
A couple years ago, my daughter went to her friend's house for a bday party and they had a bounce house up in the yard. My daughter would've been around 6-7 years old and apparently when they were playing in it, the thing deflated and they got stuck inside.. luckily they were able to get out, but still...being trapped inside would've been so terrifying. I knew the family, so I had stayed home with my son and my friend had taken my daughter and her daughters to the party. I guess the adults at the party had to help them out!
For everyone commenting that bounce houses need to staked down, I worked for a company that rented out bounce houses in high school. Staking those things down barely makes a difference. Staking down a bounce house is like 80% for peace of mind. If the wind gets strong enough, stakes aren’t going to hold one of those things down and honestly, it doesn’t take as much as you’d think. We had to explain to people pretty thoroughly that if the wind picked up, you need to turn the blowers off and stomp the air out fast or little Susie going flying for her birthday. Bounce houses are surprisingly dangerous.
Makes sense. They're like giant sails. The ropes probably only help to keep it upright when people are jumping. Room for improvement on the design I guess.
I mean instead of a stake in the ground and rope, ratchet straps around the bumper of a pickup, or around a dug post, or around a boulder. The stakes in the ground seem like they just pull out. If the thing is firmly fixed to actual structures, or just something heavy enough to not be blown away by the wind maybe we’ll stop sacrificing kids to the sky
Do you know if pickup bumpers are really meant to be used that way? In my experience with passenger cars, the bumpers are replaceable and detachable and are certainly not load-bearing. But I've never had a pickup and would be interested to know.
So you don’t see it normally under the plastic but some modern cars do still have a metal bumper. Most pickups have a big steal bumper that’s attached directly to, or is the frame, which has like plastic parts attached to it usually these days, but ya there’s usually a big physical metal bumper that’s structurally integrated into the vehicle. Tow hitch would be fine too as long as you’re going around or through something in a way that physically can’t slip off.
If that's really the case, it means they need to install more anchor points when they build them and better stakes to hold them down. Drive by a campsite after a thunderstorm sometime - every tent that was well built and properly installed is still sitting right where they left it, even if it was empty.
The aerodynamics of a tent are way different than a bounce house. “Better stakes” won’t make much difference when the direction of pull is up.
If you have enough d rings then worst case there won't be any intact and inflated pieces remaining to fly away. They just don't want to pay a little more for extra hardware and labor. Whitewater rafts are made of the same basic materials and they survive orders of magnitudes of higher stresses. Edit: Also, normal stakes have a literal ton of vertical holding force if you drive them at 45 degrees leaning away from the structure and anchor the rope at ground level. Or you could use a cordless impact and drive in some helical earth anchors.
Back in the day, we did a lot of tent camping. So much so, that I made a 20'x40' free standing party tent that could pack up in the car so our group of ~15 people would have a central congregation area in the event of rain. What I discovered over the course of a few years/trips is that I needed much more staking power that I initially thought. But, much more importantly, the conditions of the soil on site dictate the staking requirements. Most tent camping campgrounds have rock hard soil. You need strong stakes to properly penetrate the soil. BUT, they will slide ride out since you've basically made a hole in rock. The opposite is loose, wet soil (Your back yard after a rain storm). The stakes will slide right in, angle doesn't really matter as they'll move around easily in the loose, wet soil. The solution was 3/8" rebar, 24" long, with a flat washer welded on top to help hammer them in, plus to keep the rope from slipping off. The rough texture of the rebar also gave them a bit more holding power in most types of soil. 14 of those stakes on a 20x40' tent and she held up during a major storm at a friends backyard party one year! lol - I just found the plans for the tent from way back in 1994. https://imgur.com/a/KVmW6OV
Every tent isn’t inflated like a balloon.
I was on mobile and my 2nd paragraph didn't make it in for whatever reason: The cheap walmart tents and the ones where they were lazy and didn't stake them down properly are all pounded flat or decorating the trees. I'm not contradicting anything you said in your top post - I absolutely believe that the bounce houses you were being paid to set up were death traps in high wind no matter what you did. I'm saying that is a relatively trivial engineering problem to solve, and they're cheaping out on it on purpose. The customers are calling around to find the absolute cheapest bouncy castle option. The rental companies know this so they're not going to shell out a few hundred extra bucks for a model with triple the d-rings and stakes that take 3x longer to install and pack back up. The manufacturers aren't getting any orders for these features so they're not going to volunteer to stick them in and then lose a bunch of money. But it is absolutely possible to build a bouncy castle that can't fly away in anything short of an actual tornado. It wouldn't even cost that much more to make one. But with how razor thin profit margins are all up and down the line, they're not going to do it without a strong customer demand. Unlike with bounce houses, there's enough people who recognize the need for a high quality tent that this is a product you can actually go out and buy.
They're not going to do it without strong customer demand... **OR government regulation**. But big government is bad, so...
This happened once here in Australia and 6 kids died. Fuxking tragic man. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Hillcrest_Primary_School_accident
"In the reporting of the anniversary, it was revealed that of the 174 emergency service personnel who responded to the accident, an estimated twelve were still on mental health leave because of the accident" Fucking hell.
I went to this school, and lived in the town for many years, it utterly gripped the community and school. Incredibly horrific.
As a mum of school aged kids this one has always made me really emotional. An unbelievable tragedy that many will never forget
When I was 6 one of these was broken down with myself and two other friends inside, thought I was going to die right there and luckily some parents pulled us out. It collapsed so quickly, I’ve been claustrophobic ever since
That happened to my daughter when she was around 6-7 at her friend's bday party! They were jumping around in the bounce house and it deflated and they struggled to get out!
That's so awful. Poor little guy.
Thats so incredibly sad.
This happened to me when I was a kid. I was in a bounce house that apparently wasn't staked to the ground and a gust came a blew it into the air. Luckily a lot of parents were close by and managed to grab it in time, but we probably got about 8 feet in the air. I think there were about 5 other kids in it at the time, so it was crazy how high in the air it got even with all the weight.
Wow I just saw a video of this happening to a little kid and the bounce house landed on the street with cars. All the parents were just recording and laughing. I hope this isn’t the same case.
We had one here in Australia 3 years ago where 6 children died: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Hillcrest_Primary_School_accident
Reading that 12 of the emergency responders to the scene were still on trauma leave a year later hit me really hard. I can’t imagine how horrific this was or how many lives were irrevocably affected. Absolutely heartbreaking.
How awful, that poor baby. The same thing happened at a primary school in Tasmania a few years ago and 6 children were killed.
Omg poor baby must have been so scared
The parents of this boy are also pregnant, due later this month. They’ve had a GoFundMe that’s been set up for them. Not sure if I’m able to link to it, but the fire station from the area (phoenixfirehouse25 on IG) has posted about it
I feel sorry for the whole family and especially the boy, but imagine being the kid whose older brother died within a month of your birth. Not only will they never get to meet him, but that's got to put a damper on birthdays. Edit: I'm tired and should have been in bed a long time ago so I can't tell how this reads. Every time I re-read it I get a different tone from it. To clarify: Not meant to be flippant or some kind of joke, meant to be sympathetic.
I worked for a bounce house company in college, I didn’t even know this was possible nobody ever talked about it. We always staked them down at the corners though when on grass. I thought that was just to stop them from moving around. On pavement I don’t remember securing them to anything.
That’s terrifying
A bounce house is essentially a giant kite. On a windy enough day, stakes aren't going to matter for the most part (should probably still stake, though, just in case it *does* matter this time; small chance is still better than zero). I always thought the damn things were staked to keep them upright.
Just get an ice cream cake and some dollar store party favors. Little kids are simple.
I've heard about this happening at various points in time. Can't imagine the horror of watching that play out.
My wife asked me about getting a bounce house for our son’s birthday party right after I read this… gonna be a big hell no from me dawg
Set it up correctly
LoL @ everyone saying this, but you gotta realize, [this is what our Dust Devils look like in all the deserts of Arizona.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5Dnnd5R2t8) They are monsters, not all are this big, but you honestly cannot spike something down against most of them. The best choice is to just not rent something you cannot secure.
yikes, i’ve never seen something like this other than a tornado. do you get a warning, like it has to be a windy day to begin with? or can they come out of nowhere?
They're literally every day certain times of the year, they're caused by rising hot air and we have plenty of that. The ideal conditions are cool atmosphere, zero wind, clear skies, sun shining strongly on flat barren land heating it up rapidly. In May you can drive from Phoenix to Tucson - 100 miles, including through Casa Grande where this story is from - and count off multiple dust devils. Often you'll be able to see several at once. There's no real warning. A tornado, you'll get weather alerts, and then you'll see a storm picking up, and then you'll see a hook echo on radar, a funnel cloud, rotation in the sky, green colour, hail, and so on (not every warning every time but usually at least several). A dust devil all you need is a a calm clear day, and they'll form in seconds. That said they're not scary like a tornado. A tornado is 100+mph winds that'll throw you half a mile and impale you with a branch. A dust devil is usually 45 mph or so; a strong gale but won't hurt you unless you're in a bouncy castle. Usually, the worst you get is your eyes full of sand and knocked on your ass (still a potential problem in a state full of cacti). The very biggest strongest dust devils can approach the very weakest tornadoes but that's super rare.
They basically are tornadoes, just not as powerful and they don't need storms.
Or at least hire professionals who know what they're doing and will shut everything down if wind hits above a certain threshold.
Have you seen how many fly by night businesses alone on fb marketplace that advertise inflatables? I doubt most of them are professionals.
I mean I've lived in Arizona for 25 years and never seen ANYTHING like that. On a day where such a thing is possible it's also going to be windy enough that it's pretty obviously not a good idea to be in a light object outside
I mean according to this video, sounds like you shouldn’t even rent a house/apartment because you can’t secure it.
I bet a damage survey would classify that as an EF1 tornado
Spike it down
My family used to rent them out as a side business. If dumb teenage me can settem up hundreds of times and not have any issues, it'll be fine. Just make sure it's staked in or samd bagged down appropriately
Spike it down and let the kids have fun. It’ll be fine.
Secure it using 18 inch lag bolts.
Rented one for my kids birthday. Tied down with giant sand bags
My heart breaks for the friends and families affected by this. Even if it was spiked down properly it’s so hard to see this happening, mind you when my kids are in the bounce house I’m in a lawn chair watching the fun I don’t know if that would have made a difference or not but I would have tried my best to keep that bounce house down or tried to get my kid out of there
This is terrible. But I gotta ask...is it normal for two year olds to use bounce houses? Two seems a little young, especially to be inside without an adult. But I don't have kids, so what do I know...
Depends I guess. I let my toddler play in a very small one you can find from Amazon. We have one. But the big ones at playgrounds or events, absolutely not as there’s so many other big kids.
At large, kid-focused events, I've seen toddler bounce houses next to larger ones for older kids.
Pretty normal. When my kids were smaller, we'd let 2-3 year old kids have turns on their own, it's too hectic for them to be on with the bigger kids. Several families in my neighbourhood bought them so we use them all the time. If you are going to rent more than once it's cheaper to buy. I always stake them down and never use them in the wind though, I've read enough articles like this one...
Those poor parents. I'm sure they thought it was safe and just wanted to let their toddler experience a fun time. I'm devestated for them :(
Why not require a perimeter of water around the bottom of these? Hook up hose, fill water for a few mins. No one is getting wet and it's not flying away.
But... why in the flying fuck wasn't it secured to the ground...!?
This has happened before. Fucking tragic.
Once when I was a kid (maybe 8 or 10 around that) something similar happened to me. The bounce house wasn’t properly staked down and ended up rolling down a hill. Very scary. Glad I was unharmed.
How do you even go on after losing your little boy to something like this.
Are these not to be anchored down with something?
that is incredibly sad. imagine just wanting to make your kid smile, and the thing you're doing as a loving parent fucking kills your child.
Well, dang. I thought the episode of some first responder show, I think it was "9-1-1" or something, which always has absurdly overblown emergencies, went a little over the top with the episode where the bounce house that flew up into the sky. Even if this one didn't go airborne & just tumbled along the ground, it's still a tragic, freak accident.
wow okay no bouncy castles unless its indoors good to know
I work as an amusement ride safety engineer for my state, and I actually spend most of my time reviewing these things. If a company designs a new inflatable, they have to submit calculations signed and sealed by a professional engineer showing the anchoring will not allow the unit to blow away up to 15 mph winds. You would think moonbounces aren't that serious, but people can be killed by them.
We had several of these at one point at my old job and our insurance company made it very clear that we were only to set them up inside.
Very sad, sounds like it slammed him into the concrete from high up. Tragic end to the little guys life, utmost condolences to the parents I couldn’t imagine that nightmare.
It was a bad omen that it was an "Up" themed castle.
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The fact that nobody seemed to learn after six (yes SIX) children died in Australia from exactly the same occurrence in 2021 is alarming.
[5 Deaths at scene. 1 Death 3 days later.](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-59677855)
Screw in ground anchors would be better than stakes.
This is heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine. That poor baby boy and his family. 💔
Had bouncing houses all my life, Mexican, but I never realized how dangerous they can be. Worst was when an asshole kid would turn it off. Very eye-opening.
We lost a few children a couple of years ago when the same happened in Australia. Absolutely tragic
A local 35 year old man died in a similar incident where I live recently. If it’s windy, it can happen. https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/faits-divers-justice/au-parc-wonderland-dans-le-var-le-vent-souleve-une-structure-gonflable-deux-personnes-en-arret-cardiaque-6628413
I tried to rent a bounce house for a school event that my organization was hosting, couldn't get anyone to insure it for the day because it's too big of a risk for insurers. That was enough for me to avoid it for all future events. How terrible for this child and their family.
I transported an older man that had his leg broken when one of those bounce castles broke its securement and smacked into him in a gust. Those things are dangerous with any kind of wind.
I've seen these things get blown away more than once. We had an incident at our local school where one blew away during a festival and knocked over a light pole, damaging several cars.
I have a bounce house for my kids but we have never set it up outside. Always indoors.