Posted on 07/13/2006 4:47:16 PM PDT by Rte66
A 3-year-old child died from injuries she suffered after a TV fell on her at 134 Woolworth Wednesday at about 4:30 p.m., according to HPD.
(Excerpt) Read more at chron.com ...
There's no excuse for this. You don't put a 36-64" wide TV on top of an Ikea type 15" Stand.....and don't even think about casters.
I remember years ago, a nurse was killed when, after opening the bottom drawer of 48" wide file cabinet and leaving it extended,.....she opened the next to the bottom drawer and left it partly out. When she was opening the third drawer, the center of gravity changed and the entire file unit fell over on her, crushed her chest I think. All those cabinets should have been screwed to a blocked wall.
Secure your stuff folks.
I had our large flat screen mounted to the wall for this very reason. Well, also to protect the TV from the nefarious children.
Good idea. We've been empty nesters for a few years... but now have a grandchild on the way. There are many things in the house to child-proof, if such a thing is really possible.
-From 1996 through 1999, CPSC received reports of 58 children under age 5 who drowned in 5-gallon buckets.
-CPSC has received reports of 16 children under age 5 who drowned in toilets between 1996 and 1999.
I actually learned that on FR a few years ago when there was a rash of kids killed by climbing up on bookcase TV stands.
Yes--I had a friend do the very same thing to a half-size file cabinet of mine in my home office. It was stacked on top of another just like it and he thought it was a regular tall file cabinet.
He pulled out the bottom of the two drawers (about waist-high), looking for something, couldn't find it, then opened the top. Crash!
Didn't hurt him too bad, just a few cuts, but files and contents went everywhere. They don't stay together for easy sorting, either!
Yeah, I've seen articles about "clusters" of tragedies that are really meaningless in the overall context of the statistics. Sort of like FL hurricanes.
I know one of my friends had a grandchild who drowned from being sucked into the swimming pool drain, before we knew about that problem. Within a few weeks, two more deaths had occurred in this same city in the same way.
Did we notice because we were more aware, or was something else causing it to happen more frequently? Not sure about that - but they've fixed the drains with guards now.
I *almost* used the word "portable" in my comments, but thought better of it, lol. I have one of those 40-something-inch "portables" in storage and it's really *not.*
Newer large file cabinets have mechanisms that allow only one drawer to be opened at a time. All drawers must be closed before another can be opened.
Even so, I've known people to leave bottom drawers empty, and load upper drawers so much that the cabinet tips over when the heavy drawer is opened.
"If the weight of a three year old child would tip over the stand and the tv, one can only imagine what that stand was made out of.....1/4" cardboard?
Plasma's being thin are not difficult to tip over especially if the stand they sit on has a minimal depth as well. Those damn things should all be wall mounted at least 36" off the floor ( finished floor to bottom of screen). I just installed a 64" DLP for a client, weighed a ton but a lot safer then a plasma.
LOL If it's not a big floor model that looks like furniture, it's a "portable".
Since you mentioned Ikea, maybe that's a little bit of the problem - this KD - knock-down - furniture made out of cardboard.
I loved it for storage-type things because of the cost and ease of putting it together, but it is definitely too flimsy for the rough-and-tumble of young children. And yet, it's usually the young parents who have to buy KD just to outfit their first place.
You can still buy them; We just got rid of ours. It weighed a TON, though.
I did a quick search using "console" and "floor model" TVs and mostly got hits on ebay.
Like what? Do you think the Democrats are trying to thin out the Republican ranks? Is it the FBI? Or maybe Karl Rove's weather machine has run amok?
As for me and my family, this is so series that we're all setting our beebers to stune.
Children are always climbing on things...this is so sad, ping.
Oh, I have a little 5" B/W battery-op in my hurricane kit - now, *that's* a portable. Somewhat of a dinosaur now, too.
I just knew some FReepers would know the answers. Thank you so much. I always vote for Rove's machine when a death is involved, but not a kid's.
I've known people to do that, too. File cabinets really should be banned, so that only outlaws will have to deal with them.
The bottom cabinet of my stackers did have the one-drawer-at-a-time mechanism. That's why I hated using it, lol. It was just there for ballast.
I think its because we notice more. Just like with airplane accidents. Planes crash all the time. They are seldom noticed unless they are large. But if one large one crashes, then the press will take notice of the smaller ones as a follow-up to the larger crash. After two times they lose interest and ignore tham again. This leads to the "group of three" error -- thinking that these things happen in clusters of three.
It happened in the "year of the shark" a few years back. The MSM started reporting every shark attack and made it seem to be a problem, but in fact that year there were less attacks than in the previous few years.
Earthquakes too. There are plenty of earthquakes every day, but only if a big one happens will the subsequent small ones be reported and when they are -- the press will make it seem like there is a outbreak of new earthquakes.
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