U.S. to Investigate Disneyland Injury

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced Wednesday that it will investigate a playground accident at Disneyland to determine whether the equipment on which a 6-year-old girl lost most of an index finger is defective and should be removed.

Six-year-old Priscilla Figueroa was playing with a toy rifle Sunday in a fort on Tom Sawyer Island when she apparently slipped and her finger became caught on something, according to Anaheim police reports released Wednesday. The North Hollywood girl was taken to UCI Medical Center in Orange, but because the injury extended to a tendon in her hand and arm, doctors were unable to reattach her finger. She was discharged from the hospital Monday, and is now in a full arm cast to allow her forearm and tendons to heal, her father said.

The island, which was shut down after the accident, remained closed Wednesday. Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said he did not know when it would reopen. Despite a new law giving the state the authority to investigate serious injury accidents at theme parks, officials with the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health said that because the accident did not occur on a ride, it is outside their jurisdiction.

But in a rare move, the federal commission has said it will use its authority to look into possible needs for product recalls.

Though the federal commission doesn’t regulate playgrounds or amusement parks, commission spokeswoman Jane Francis said the agency’s reach is vast and it can probe nearly any device that the public comes in contact with--at last count more than 15,000 types of products.

In recent years, various efforts have been made to grant the commission authority to investigate theme-park accidents, which it had until 1981. Congress revoked that authority after legal challenges and lobbying by the industry; attempts by legislators to have it reinstated have failed.

But Francis said Wednesday that the commission could potentially recall the piece of equipment Priscilla was injured on, if they deem it unsafe.

“If it’s not an amusement ride, we can investigate,” she said. “We’re not getting into whether something is playground equipment or not. . . . Our concern is whether a piece of equipment is safe. . . . If there’s a defect with the equipment, we need to look into it.”

Gomez said “it is unclear whether the commission would even have jurisdiction over Disneyland.”

In any event, the commission has not contacted the park, the Disney spokesman said.

He also said that any attempt by the commission to recall park equipment would be “a first in our history.”

Playground Laws Have No Teeth

But Francis said the agency has recalled playground equipment in the past. In 1993, for instance, it ordered 3,000 slides removed from playgrounds nationwide because the design could lead children wearing certain types of clothing to be strangled. The number of devices in use doesn’t matter; Francis said the agency has the authority to ban a unique piece of equipment like the one at Disneyland if it is found to be unsafe.

California does have laws regulating playgrounds--but little power of enforcement.

Barb Alberson, chief of the state and local injury control program for the California Department of Health Services, said an estimated 100,000 playgrounds in California were required to be inspected by last October.

That mandate stems from a law passed a decade ago. But even though the regulations are mandatory, there are no enforcement provisions specified in the law, Alberson said.

“They are self-enforcing regulations,” he said. Overseers of playgrounds hire their own “certified playground safety” inspector. They don’t have to file a compliance report with the state. The state doesn’t check whether inspections have been done. And, even if it did, there’s little that can be done: There are no fines for noncompliance, Alberson said.

Gomez said Disneyland regularly inspects Tom Sawyer Island and the rest of the park to make sure it is safe.

Alberson added that areas such as Tom Sawyer Island at “large-scale operations” such as Disneyland were “dismissed” from the law’s mandates, but did not know why.

Meanwhile, a police report released Wednesday indicates that the girl was wearing a ring on the finger that was torn off in the accident.

Another parkgoer lost a finger five years ago at the park in a ring-related incident.

In 1996, 17-year-old James Eubanks lost his finger on the Splash Mountain ride. The log ride jerked forward, Eubanks said, and he flung his hands out and caught his ring on a screw protruding from a hatch on the top of the flume ride. The force wrenched his finger off from above the socket.

Eubanks sued the park, but in 1997 an Orange County jury decided in Disney’s favor. Some jurors said they felt that Eubanks should not have had his hands outside the ride.

The police report on the Sunday incident indicates that the tear to Priscilla’s finger was not a clean one, making it more difficult to reattach.

According to the police report, Priscilla was playing with a toy gun in the tower, but there was no blood or other indication that her finger was caught in a trigger.

There were no witnesses. The girl’s grandmother, who had taken her to Disneyland, told police that she did not see the accident, but heard Priscilla scream and saw that the girl had lost the top two-thirds of her left index finger. She is right-handed.

Because the playground is on an island, Anaheim Fire Dept. paramedics and Disney nurses had to take a raft to the scene.

Finger Couldn’t Be Reattached

One bystander who rushed to the little girl’s aid while she waited for medical personnel said he was impressed with her composure.

The Orange County man contacted by The Times said Priscilla asked if she was going to die, and if it was her fault that her finger was cut. But she did everything the nurses and paramedics told her to do, said the man, who asked that his name not be published.

“For what she went through, . . . she was coherent,” he said.

Her father, D’Artagnan Figueroa, said that because of the extensive damage to the tendon in Priscilla’s hand and arm, doctors could not reattach the finger.

Dr. Roy Meals, clinical professor of orthopedic surgery at UCLA, said there’s a 90% chance of success in surgeries caused by a clean cut, such as that from a saw, because the “zone of injury” is typically one-sixteenth of an inch wide.

But surgery on a “blunt injury,” like the one suffered by Priscilla, has only a 10% likelihood of success, he said.

“The arteries, nerves and tendons get stretched and bruised and crushed from one end to another,” Meals said. “It’s basically impossible . . . to hook it back up and get circulation restored.”

Priscilla was released from the hospital Monday, and is now resting at home, taking antibiotics and painkillers, her father said Wednesday.

Times correspondent Tami Min contributed to this report.

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Tom Sawyer Island

A 6-year-old girl lost a finger while playing with a toy rifle at Fort Wilderness on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland. A look at the playground area: