There was a scare during Canada Day festivities in downtown La Ronge yesterday.
An older man and a child were injured at the local children’s festival when a strong gust of wind suddenly sent a bouncy castle tumbling.
The child was one of four kids in the inflatable device at the time — but the other three youths managed to exit the castle as it rolled down a hill toward the main road in La Ronge’s downtown area.
La Ronge EMS EMT Corey Ecarnot says the elderly man was hurt when he and others tried to stop the carnival attraction from rolling into a tent where kids were getting their faces painted:
“A lot of people just ran to the area to try to stop it from continuing on, when an elderly gentleman was trying to stop it and was actually plowed over and was underneath the castle after it had come to a stop.”
Ecarnot says the child who was in the bouncy castle for the duration of its tumble complained of some pain, but was mostly just shaken up — while the man suffered minor injuries, including cuts that needed stitches.
La Ronge Children’s Festival co-chair Heather Bernardin says the bouncy castle is one of two owned by the festival.
Bernardin says the attraction was not properly tethered at the time — and because it arrived without the usual tethering equipment, a committee member mistakenly assumed it didn’t need it:
“Obviously, it does. So those are additional safety things that we have to enforce and go over with our committee members and our volunteers next year, because this could have turned out much worse than it was. It’s a major oversight and an unfortunate oversight. But we’ve talked to all the people involved and moved forward with them and with our committee on trying to make our protocols much safer in setting up and taking down bouncy castles.”
Bernardin says the committee has been able to get in touch with the families of most of the children who were on the ride at the time.