Balloon Incident in El Paso
[Guest post by DRJ]
Remember the Colorado balloon boy? It was a hoax but there was the real thing in El Paso today:
“Three small children were hurt when a jumping balloon they were inside of was picked up by a gust of wind Sunday afternoon in the Lower Valley.
Firefighters and witnesses said the balloon was lifted 10 feet in the air and carried into the back yard of a home three houses away in the 7300 block of Alpine.
The children, who were between 2 and 7 years old, were taken to a hospital with serious injuries.”
Blow-up jumpers are popular for kids in my community. I haven’t heard of an incident like this but West Texas has big winds, so there’s a reason they are supposed to be tied down.
I hope these kids will be okay. Their flight was “only” three blocks houses away and it shows how dangerous the balloon boy’s flight would have been.
— DRJ
One time, in our apartment by the lake in Chicago, we had sixty mile an hour winds with 100 mile an hour gusts. The deck chairs by the pool were floating like leaves and the railings from the balconies were torn off and landed on the garage roof fifty feet away. Not a tornado in the classic sense but there were two hundred foot high waterspouts in the lake and in other parts of the city buildings were collapsed by minibursts of air coming straight down on the roofs.
nk (db4a41) — 4/4/2010 @ 5:01 pmThere’s a good reason they call Chicago the Windy City!
DRJ (daa62a) — 4/4/2010 @ 5:29 pmGood thing the adults weren’t too drunk to notice the kids were gone..
I am no longer a big George Lopez fan (does plastic surgery make you mean?) but his bit on the “jumping house being bigger than the real house” is funny.
I am glad the kids are OK.
Steve G (7d4c78) — 4/4/2010 @ 5:34 pmI dunno if it is better for them to grow up afraid of jumping houses or clowns
They landed three houses away not three blocks.
Dave (e49415) — 4/4/2010 @ 6:02 pmWhy wouldn’t they stake that bad boy down? What’s the over/under of a lawyer pimp already contacting them?
BradnSA (980254) — 4/4/2010 @ 6:13 pmEnjoy life. Only the dead are without danger.
nk (db4a41) — 4/4/2010 @ 6:18 pmThanks, Dave. I corrected it.
DRJ (daa62a) — 4/4/2010 @ 7:03 pmBrad,
They may have staked it down. In West Texas, it’s common to have a thin layer of topsoil sitting on top of hard caliche. Thus, at times even when you can stake something down, it doesn’t hold.
DRJ (daa62a) — 4/4/2010 @ 7:05 pmYou can add some additional weight by putting some water in the inflated area to go along with the air, since the water just drops to the bottom and acts as an anchor. Of course, then you’ve got to dump it somewhere once the thing’s deflated and folded back up.
John (d4490d) — 4/5/2010 @ 1:21 amNo amount of weight will hold those things down when there is high wind. If you read the direction anything over 25 mph and it shouldn’t be set up! The only reason to hold it down is so it doesn’t move when the children are inside. It’s sad that children were hurt at the parents lack of good judgement.
Tabby (ebab75) — 4/6/2010 @ 9:37 amI KNEW IT. nk is obviously referring to an attempted exorcism. And I’m supposed to believe it’s a coincidence that Obama hails from the windy city?
How much is one of these things, rented for a day, compared to taking your kids in a proper hot air balloon?
dustin (b54cdc) — 4/6/2010 @ 9:45 am