Children injured as storms ruin festival

[TexasStooge]

High winds cause bounce houses to collapse in The Colony

By SAM HODGES / The Dallas Morning News

THE COLONY, Texas - One child suffered a broken arm and others received minor injuries Saturday night when severe storms caused several bounce houses to collapse at a Fourth of July celebration in The Colony.

About 9 p.m., high winds at the city's Liberty by the Lake event at Stewart Creek Park caused three bounce houses to collapse with children inside. Frantic parents and other adults ran to the inflatable play areas to pull the children out.

A 10-year-old suffered a broken arm and was taken to a hospital, while many others had bruises and scrapes.

The celebration, which is by Lewisville Lake and was to include a fireworks show, was immediately canceled.

Meanwhile, the storms briefly brought hail to downtown Dallas and knocked out power to about 9,000 TXU customers in the greater Dallas area.

Most of those affected were residential customers in the city of Dallas, but about 1,000 were in suburbs to the southwest and north, said Carol Peters, TXU spokeswoman.

"We're assessing damage to see just what we need to do to restore service," Ms. Peters said late Saturday.

A severe storm formed about 7:30 p.m. between Hutchins and DeSoto and moved north through downtown Dallas, bringing winds of about 45 mph, said Joe Harris, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

The same storm dropped 1-inch diameter hail in downtown Dallas about 8 p.m., he said.

Hail that size "can ping a car roof, basically," Mr. Harris said. "It can rip leaves off trees."

The storms delayed the arrival of two Southwest Airlines flights at Dallas' Love Field. A spokesman for Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport said operations there were not much affected by the storms.

WFAA ABC 8 contributed to this report.

[Dr. Jonah Rainwater]

Funny, I never saw rain....

That's Texas for you.