The following is a news release from Extreme Air Park, which follows the death of Jay Greenwood at its Richmond trampoline facility.
See the story here and the Richmond News investigation into trampoline park safety regulations here.
Premier Horgan,
British Columbia is home to a wide range of leisure and recreation facilities that contribute to making our province a great place to live, work, play and visit. Whether skiing down the slopes of British Columbia's world class mountains, whale watching, swimming in our lakes, rivers, pools or visiting a local trampoline park, many of the activities British Columbians and visitors seek out involve a degree of unavoidable risk.
Extreme Air Parks operates three trampoline facilities in British Columbia and focuses on providing a fun, safe experience for our guests. Without regulations in place for our industry, we've focused on meeting and exceeding industry best practices and regulations that exist for facilities like ours elsewhere.
Since opening our first facility in British Columbia five years ago, we’ve had over one million visits to our three facilities. The safety of our guests is our top priority. We have well established protocols to ensure our equipment is safe and properly maintained. We ensure that each guest understands the risks and we instruct them on proper use of our equipment. All guests sign a waiver that indicates they understand the inherent risks involved with trampolining.
We have a strict safety protocol in place to protect our guests, employees and emergency responders at our facilities. For any injury greater than a scrape, our staff phone BC Ambulance Service to assess the guest. Extreme Air Park facilities have contacted the BC Ambulance Service 87 times, meaning they have evaluated just 1 in approximately 11,550 guests.
On two occasions we have been party to legal action and, despite the claims, we opted to settle each after determining it to be more cost effective than litigation. We designed our facilities to ensure that when first responders and other non-participants are on the trampolining floor, there are suitable walkways that are wide enough for quick and safe access throughout the facility on a padded, but firm surface.
This allows first responders, staff and parents to avoid the flexible trampoline material and risk possible injury to themselves. We have worked with WorkSafe BC to ensure that our workplace meets or exceeds British Columbia's workplace safety regulations.
Recently, there was a tragic accident at our facility that raised a number of questions in the media and public regarding the lack of regulation for facilities like ours. This was the first fatality we've experienced at any of our facilities, despite having had more than 1 million visitors over the years.
We are awaiting the Coroner's investigation to the incident at our facility and note that reports by the Coroner's Office indicates that between 2008-2016, a total of 96 people tragically died skiing or snowboarding (10.7 people per year), while sadly 29 people drowned in swimming pools (3.2 per year). Last week, the Coroner's Office made recommendations to improve whale watching safety in British Columbia following the deaths of six tourists in 2015 as well.
Extreme Air Parks believes it is important for British Columbians and visitors to have faith in our province's safety standards overall and would welcome the regulation of trampoline parks, if the Province believes such regulation is warranted.
We understand that amusement park equipment is regulated by Technical Safety BC, and swimming pools have regulations enacted by the Legislature relating to their operation. We believe a hybrid approach that regulates the equipment and facilities under Technical Safety BC and operations in a manner that is comparable with swimming pools would be appropriate and is a conversation we would welcome with your government.
Extreme Air Parks remains committed to providing a safe, fun environment for our guests. We are proud of the nearly $7 million dollars of investment we've put into making our facilities fun and safe.
In our five years of operation, we've created and sustain approximately 50 jobs in British Columbia and given valuable work experience to many young people, while directly investing millions into the local economy.
I would welcome the opportunity to work with your government to develop comprehensive regulations that give the public confidence that, in addition to the hard work trampoline parks put into ensuring the safety of their guests, there is Provincial oversight into trampoline park safety as well.
Sincerely,
Michael Marti
Extreme Air Parks
