A plastic playground slide in Wisconsin bubbled and “exploded,” injuring a 9-year-old boy, local reports said.
Giuseppe Storniolo, 9, was at the Reservoir Park in West Allis when the incident took place. People said they heard a loud bang.
“I just heard like a big explosion so I thought maybe something fell,” Storniolo’s mother, Diana, told WTMJ.
She ran over and saw a warped slide and her injured son.
It’s unclear why the slide exploded.
A hole was created at the bottom, triggering it to bubble up before popping, Fox News reported.
“It was like the slide had almost been inflated,” West Allis Mayor Dan Devine told local outlets. “It just opened up, bubbled.”
“I’ve never heard of this happening,” added Michael Lewis, the West Allis director of public works, Greenfield West Allis Now reported. “I sent an email to my professional organization this morning to see if anybody else had an experience like this.”
The firm that installed the slide last year will inspect it this week.
There were theories that heat was to blame for the slide explosion.
“The slide went through more heat the week before,” Lewis was quoted by the website as saying. The weather at that time was in the 90s.
“They have the same exact model in Arizona,” Devine noted, adding that temperatures in Arizona get much hotter.
Police have ruled out vandalism or terrorism.
“Police tested it for explosives and didn’t find anything,” Lewis noted.
The young child suffered second-degree burns on his leg, Fox News reported.
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