The last thing little Lizzette Peña ever did in this world was to climb up to get a toy atop the family's 37 inch TV. It fell and crushed her skull, killing her.
Freak accident? Maybe, but there are a lot just like it. Lisette lived in Houston, where the staff of Memorial Hermann Hospital there is familiar with the problem.
In the past year, at Memorial Hermann Hospital alone, there have been 11 injuries from falling televisions. In the past four months, five of those have resulted in death. The extent of the problem at other Houston-area hospitals could not be determined at press time.
The previous incident occurred July 6, when 2-year-old Diego Martinez knocked a large television set onto himself and was pinned beneath it for several minutes. He died later that day.
There are no national numbers for fatalities, but in 2005, U.S. emergency-room doctors treated 2,600 children younger than 5 injured by falling televisions, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. (Houston Chronicle)
Injuries are the leading cause of death in young people over the age of 1 and up to age 34. TV sets have gotten larger and they are top heavy, making tipping easy. But it isn't just the big sets, like the one in the Peña household, which stood on a small wooden table, just four feet off the ground. A review of 26 similar (but non-fatal) injuries in Dallas's Children's Medical Center found that the more common 20 to 30 inch sets constituted two thirds of the cases, with the big 30 to 40 inchers only one case in six. As commonly involved as the large sets were the ones 19 inches and smaller.
Most parents have no idea of the danger. Some preventive measures: keep TVs out of reach of small children and don't put toys or other objects of interest on top of them. Most of these accidents happen as did the Peña case with a child trying to retrieve something on top of the set. If you can, try to anchor them against the wall or otherwise secure them from tipping.
Whenever I hear a story like this, I think again how our children are hostages to fortune. A little awareness here can improve their chances. If you have young children, go take a look at your TV. Go ahead. Do it now. I'll wait.
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We have a large TV and we bought the CORRECT stand for it to sit on so it would not tip over. You have to wonder what these things were sitting on. Did the people buy some rickety piece of cabinetry to set it on, did they use the old platform from a smaller TV, or were they just too cheap to buy the stand that fits the machine? I know the correct TV cabinets can be pricey, but most of those TVs are very unstable unless they are fully supported all the way around the base.
As in most things, you get what you pay for. If you put an oversized TV on a small platform you are asking for trouble whether you have small kids or not. A slight bump could easily cause one of those to fall off and hurt anyone or anything in the way.
G: I don't think it was the stability of the cabinetry but the fact that, as you say, the sets are top heavy and unstable. In the case reported I believe it was on a sturdy wooden table, four feet high. So it isn't the stand that is the problem. To secure the sets probably isn't expensive if you know it needs to be done. But few parents are aware of the hazard, unfortunately.
One (minor) benefit of living in an earthquake-prone country is that you anchor all heavy objects as a matter of course. A coworker lived in Kobe at the time of the large earthquake there ten years ago, and he describes how he woke up from the shaking and the first thing he sees is his television flying right over his head and crashing against the far wall.
Anyway, this particular problem will probably lessen as flat-screen TV's become more common.
Velcro makes a TV pad that you can fasten onto the base for this kind of thing. You can actually do it by going to WalMart or a fabric shop and get some of those stick down 4 foot sections and put it on. Its wicked stuff. Dont plan on picking it back up without help though. We have ours done and several other things like computer monitors that are on the arm racks.. Make sure they too are locked in. Our little pair of 4.5 and 4.7's from last year flipped a 400 dollar monitor in a springboard effect six feet into the air and landed directly into a trash can.
Revere: My supervisor and his wife just had a baby this week-end and we've been busy trying to help them child-proof their house. Even though most of our staff have kids, the TV was one thing we never even thought of. Thanks for the tip -- we'll pass it on.
One more example of the outcome of addiction to electronic heroin. Catch the Zen TV Experiment and Mander's Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television at the link.
The web is more like electronic crack but Mander's observation of electronic heroin still applies:
Hi Tympanachus, My ancestors who came to the U.S. well before it was called the U.S. had axes, guns and plenty of dangerous heavy stuff around the house. You can bet they did child-proofing, otherwise I wouldn't be here. As for addiction, there are plenty of places where you can walk down the street and buy crack cocaine -- it's up to you to say no. As for me, I like to watch the traffic and weather when I get up in the morning.
One of my employee's daughters was seriously injured this way. TVs are especially dangerous because they are heavy items that are frequently supported by moveable tables. When the kid tries to move the TV they push the table, which starts with a jerk and the TV topples off.
It's not just TVs - all freestanding furniture is a major danger: I knew a woman whose son was killed by a falling cupboard. Kids like climbing on furniture and they have little understanding of the risks involved.
I ordered some bookcases the other day. I'm having them bolted to the wall. I used to have a TV on a moveable stand myself. Not any more.
I worked at a hospital in Los Angeles during the '94 Northridge Quake. Our area was not damaged much at all (downtown), but we admitted lots of people whose televisions had fallen on them and then imploded, resulting in nasty glass cuts. Our area of service was one of the few tenement neighborhoods in Los Angeles with families of 8 crowded into single rooms, etc., so when the TV fell off the table it was going to land on someone. Very sad scenes.
Gee, I thought TV only killed the mind.
(Thanks, I'll remember it.)
I have a sturdy wooden table 4 feet high. It is very easy to tip it over so we use it for spider webs homes in our barn. Our TV stand has a raised lip that the TV fits into, velcro inside to anchor it, does not move (no wheels) and has a solid flat base on the bottom (not table legs). It is about as heavy as the TV and was built specifically for that model of TV.
Putting anything extremely heavy on a flat table with legs, no matter how sturdy, is a recipe for disaster unless the table is wide and long enough not to move much (like a dining room table). Even velcro-ing the TV to a table is not good enough. The table, even those with out wheels, will fall over WITH the TV still attached to it. Ours did in the 1971 Los Angeles earthquake.
Ricardo: "My ancestors who came to the U.S. well before it was called the U.S."
"Spect that was not on the Mayflower. Descendant of Cabeza de Vaca? The first "American" travel writer had quite an adventure in the New World.
When a relative of mine was a toddler, she tried to climb up onto a TV cabinet, and the set fell on her hand and severed part of her finger. Fortunately, her mom got her to the ER rapidly enough for the digit to be re-attached, and she's a promising keyboard player now.
File this one under "Extremely dangerous things that you'd never figure out the kids would do until someone does it." Yikes!
My former landlord had a TV on a shelf 7' high and across the bedroom so he could sit in bed early in the morning and trade options. That shelf had no bolts.
And there's also the 3'foot kid grabbing the handle of a pot of boiling water.
Revere: Thanks for the tip. These all sound like really sad, tragic injuries and maybe this post will help prevent a few.
In regards to the comment by G in INdiana: What is wrong with you? I can't believe your first thought after reading the post was to blame the parents--and in a very "they deserve what they got" sort of way. Seriously, though. Who shat in your cornflakes this morning?