A five-year-old Prince Edward Island girl is in hospital after a trampoline she was playing on was carried about 40 metres by wind gusts and landed on top of her.
Ella Hurry was jumping on a trampoline Sunday in Wheatley River, P.E.I., when high winds carried the trampoline across the yard, tearing the clothesline off a pole and landing on her.
“She just went outside to play,” her grandmother Stella McNeill said Monday. “She was only out a couple minutes when they heard a loud bang.”
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Ella’s father ran out and lifted the trampoline off her, but she was unconscious, McNeill said.
“She’s only 37 pounds,” she said. “It’s a big trampoline and it landed right on her.”
The girl regained consciousness after about five minutes and then started to cry, McNeill said.
Paramedics took Ella to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown, where doctors ran several tests before she was airlifted around midnight to the IWK Health Centre in Halifax.
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Ella has a concussion and a badly bruised lung, but McNeill said doctors expect she will make a full recovery.
“The breathing tubes have all come out and she’s breathing on her own,” she said. “They say the bleed is very small on her brain, so things are going very good.”
McNeill added: “She’s quite a little spitfire. She’s got three older sisters and she holds her own pretty well.”
McNeill is urging parents to tie down trampolines to prevent a similar accident – or worse.
“Spend $20 bucks and get the pegs and tie them down,” she said. “It’s a cheap fix because the next one might not be so lucky.”
The accident took place at Ella’s paternal grandparents’ house and they have since gotten rid of the trampoline, said McNeill, who is Ella’s maternal grandmother.
However, she said the family also owns a trampoline at their home, and they are safely securing it.
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“There has never been any issue before,” McNeill said. “It seems like this was just a fluke, but parents should be aware that these things should be tied down to prevent injury.”
McNeill, who arrived in Halifax early Monday, said the family has purchased Ella a stuffed tiger, because she is a fighter, but that right now she is getting lots of sleep.
“She hasn’t spoke anything yet,” she said, adding that the family hoped she’ll be able to leave the intensive care unit later Monday.
Environment Canada recorded wind gusts of up to 81 km/hr in the area on Sunday.
Linda Libby, meteorologist with the federal agency based in Charlottetown, said there are two stations in the area that measured high winds. One in nearby Harrington recorded gusts of up to 78 km/hr, while Stanhope National Park reported gusts up to 81 km/hr.
“It was certainly blowing more than it does normally,” she said, adding that winds have to reach 90 km/hr before a warning is issued.
Libby said an unstable low pressure weather system may have contributed to the trampoline accident, as a gust of warmer air could have hit the ground and bounced back up.
“Trampolines are like big sails, so they can catch the wind.”
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