U.S. Agency to Investigate Accident at Disneyland That Claimed Finger
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.
Priscilla Figueroa was playing with a toy rifle Sunday in a play fort on Tom Sawyer Island when she apparently slipped and her finger got caught on something, according to Anaheim police reports released Wednesday. The North Hollywood girl was rushed to UC Irvine Medical Center in Orange, but because the injury extended to a tendon in her hand, doctors were unable to reattach her finger. She was discharged from the hospital on Monday, and is now in a full arm cast to allow her forearm and tendons to heal, her father said.
Although a new law gives the state the authority to investigate serious-injury accidents at theme parks, officials with the Division of Occupational Safety and Health said Tuesday that because the accident did not occur on a ride, it is outside of the division’s jurisdiction.
But in a rare move, the federal commission said it will use its authority to look into possible needs for recalls and investigate the accident.
Jane Francis, spokeswoman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, said that although the federal commission doesn’t regulate playgrounds or amusement parks, the agency’s reach is vast and it can probe nearly any device that the public comes in contact with--more than 15,000 types of products.
In recent years, 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 recall the piece of equipment Priscilla was injured on, if investigators 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.”
Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez said, “It is unclear whether the commission would even have jurisdiction over Disneyland.”
The commission has not contacted the park, he said.
He also said that any attempt by the commission to recall park equipment would be “a first in our history.”
But Francis said the agency has recalled playground equipment in the past. In 1993, it ordered 3,000 slides removed from playgrounds nationwide because its 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.
Meanwhile, a police report on the incident released Wednesday says that there was a ring on the finger that was torn off in the accident. The report also says that the tear was not a clean one--which would have made it more likely that doctors could reattach the lost digit.
According to the police report, Priscilla was playing with a toy gun in the tower, but there was no blood or other sign that her finger got caught in a trigger. She lost the top two-thirds of her left index finger. She is right-handed.
Doctors at UC Irvine told Priscilla’s father, D’Artagnan Figueroa, that she was lucky not to have lost all function in her left hand.
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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 in Ft. Wilderness on Tom Sawyer Island at Disneyland. A look at the playground area:
