Dad snaps ankles after inflatable slide collapses
A father of three will spend the first few weeks of 2021 in hospital after a giant inflatable slide collapsed breaking both of his ankles.
Louwan van Rooyen, 32, was airlifted to Waikato Hospital on Monday after the 15m-high bouncy castle he was standing on collapsed to the ground at the Whangamata Summer Festival Craft Markets.
The inflatable was a crowd favourite throughout the two-day event at Williamson Park, but the volume of children and parents allegedly became too much.
At 2pm it collapsed and brought van Rooyen down with it.
At the time of its collapse, van Rooyen was standing at the top. He slid down as it started to fall and landed on both feet before falling to the ground.
He wasn’t able to get back up again.
Both ankles were broken – one in three places and the other was an ‘‘open break’’. ‘‘The bone was coming out of his leg,’’ said his wife Minnette, who was at the bottom of the slide when it happened.
‘‘It was chaos, parents were looking for their children, shouting, trying to find them,’’ she said.
She didn’t see anyone fall, but she saw the castle falling to the side.
It’s then she saw her husband lying on the ground.
‘‘He was just lying there, and I saw the extent of what the injury was.’’
According to van Rooyen, the inflatable slide collapsed because there were too many people on it.
‘‘We had been down [the slide] a few times already but it was starting to get very busy.
‘‘I think it collapsed because there was too much weight.’’
He was doing all he could to stop more people coming up onto the slide. ‘‘I climbed up and remember telling my friend he needs to tell the guy standing on the ground to stop bringing people up because there were too many people.’’
A boy was ‘‘crying hysterically, and my friend wanted to bring him back down,’’ but the inflatable started to collapse, he said.
Van Rooyen said there were no indications that the slide wasn’t sound. ‘‘It’s pretty safe, there are chains and ropes holding it down.’’
After surgery, he will spend the next three weeks in hospital, six weeks in a wheelchair and another six with assistance while walking.
‘‘It will be a long journey, but we will get there,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s still unreal, I’m a plumber, so
I need my legs.
‘‘We were there last year as well. We always do the slide.’’
It was the van Rooyens’ last day of their summer holiday with friends before heading home to Hamilton. They had no idea it would end in devastation.
The van Rooyens are now coming to terms with the injury and how life will proceed from here.
‘‘Thankfully we just moved into our house in Hamilton’’, Minnette said, ‘‘but we’re still unsure how his wheelchair will get around.
‘‘We will see how it all goes. ‘‘It’s been hard, but we’re very thankful, it could have been a lot worse.’’
The van Rooyens moved from South Africa two years ago and have three children, aged six, five and two.
‘‘It is difficult with three young ones, but we need to try to juggle our children now, we have no family here, so it’s just us.
‘‘The way forward will be a hard one.’’
The family expressed gratitude to emergency services who responded rapidly to the incident.
From the St John medics, to ‘‘the guys in the helicopter and hospital staff, they have been very kind to me and I’ve been taken care of,’’ van Rooyen said.