This past May, a Florida waterspout-turned-tornado made national news carrying an inflatable bounce house into the air with children inside. Three children were injured.
The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) collects data on injuries and fatalities from inflatable amusements and its most recent report, dated February 2015, summarizes this data from 2003-2013.
According to the report, during the 10-year period, there were an estimated 113,272 emergency department-treated injuries with over 90% associated with bounce houses. Most of the injuries were to limbs, such as fractures, strains, sprains, or dislocations. There were also 12 fatalities related to inflatable amusements in this timeframe. The report states that there was a “statistically significant increasing linear trend of yearly estimates for emergency department-treated injuries.”
