By Debby Woodin
Globe Staff Writer
—
Area school districts regularly perform safety and maintenance checks on playground equipment and some made extra checks after the death last week of a 9-year-old girl on a Wyandotte, Okla., school playground.
Fourth-grader Alyssa Avila died Thursday, Aug. 19, after she fell off a new piece of equipment installed on the playground called an X-Wave, a three-piece teeter-totter device.
School authorities said other students told them she fell off, got up and tried to get back on. She may have fallen a second time and hit her head, police investigating the incident said last week.
An autopsy did not reveal a cause of death.
Since then, several Oklahoma school districts that had the same or similar equipment have removed it or kept children off the X-Waves.
The Associated Press reports that school districts in Moore, Edmond, Oklahoma City, Putnam City, Deer Creek and Norman are some of the schools found to have the X-Waves.
Quality control manager Matt Stewart for X-Wave manufacturer Xccent Inc., would not discuss how many units have been sold to Oklahoma schools, the AP reported.
However, most Northeast Oklahoma schools said they did not have that type of playground equipment.
“We do not have one of the X-Waves,” said Dave Roberts, safety director at the Grove, Okla., school district. “That was one of the first things we checked,” he said after hearing of the tragedy at Wyandotte.
Checking the safety of the playground is done regularly there, Roberts said. “We are always in the process of making sure there are no sharp edges, everything’s tied down, there are soft landings and we have adequate supervision on the playground.”
X-Waves do not seem to be common on school playgrounds in Kansas or Missouri, either.
David Carriger, the superintendent at Columbus, Kan., said one is not found on playgrounds in that district. He said safety inspections are done twice each semester and school personnel report any breakage or issues they see in daily monitoring. “That is always an issue; always a concern,” Carriger said.
“We don’t have those,” said Lamar, Mo., superintendent Dennis Wilson. He said school personnel there do monthly checks on the safety and stability of playground equipment.
A Carthage assistant superintendent, Mark Baker, said there are no X-Waves in that district either.
“We do safety checks prior to school starting (for the school year) and weekly to make sure everything is attached and screwed in,” he said. The death at Wyandotte “unfortunately was a reminder to school districts to do their safety checks.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Apparatus history
Ken Murphy, chief of the Wyandotte Nation Tribal Police, said last week his research of the X-Wave showed it being used at hundreds of playgrounds around the country with no reports of other serious accidents.
