We’re all about safety, so we feel obligated to let you know that at any time you could be impaled by a flying beach umbrella. Cover your body with Kevlar at all times. That’s what one Ocean City, Maryland beach-goer should have done if she was really serious about safety. Her reckless lack of body armor resulted in a beach umbrella sticking out of her leg.
Authorities told WBOC that the woman was in good spirits and expected to be okay after an umbrella was picked up out of the ground and blown into her leg by strong winds. EMTs had to saw off part of the umbrella in order to take her to the hospital.
We dug up some information about the best sunscreens from CR Health so you can avoid these menacing umbrellas. We wish this lady the best.
Woman stabbed by ‘flying umbrella’ [ABC2 via Fark]
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Just when I think this is a totally non-consumer story that couldn’t be any dumber, you link a “best sunscreens” article…….and TOTALLY REDEEM YOURSELF!
Ugh. Worst movie ever.
Ugh. Worst movie ever.
Somewhere, Mary Poppins is laughing.
Yeeeeah?
It looks like the EMTs have this injury……covered
I don’t know, something about that umbrella seems a little . . . . shady.
At least they didn’t try to cover the incident up. In the political sense that is…
Damnit, now they’ll have to perform a recall so they can install tethers to your umbrellas. *shakes fist at umbrella companies*
Dammit Christo, I thought you learned your lesson the first time.
Someone may be tempted to suggest banning beach umbrellas. I say BAN BEACHES!
Ban this menace now!
Beaches kill hundreds of whales every year!
They’re also stealing BP’s oil.
Kevlar vest material does not protect from stabbing impacts. Now if she had a Kevlar helmet, that might have deflected the stabby item.
Chainmail does protect against it, and there are many modern “stab vests” that incorpate it (popular in the UK where knife crime is more common than gun crime)
Not actually new…those of us who have spent a lot of time on beaches have seen it happen many times, although probably now with such disastrous results.
Those of us who have spent a lot of time on beaches have also developed the appropriate skills to be able to safely put up an umbrella!
Is it me… or is the world windy-er now?
I used to rent umbrellas to beach-goers about ten blocks from there. The high-rises and the dunes play havoc with the west winds, and the visitors to the beach really have no idea that it’s a concern. Also, if someone tilts their umbrella to the south to block the summer sun, a gust from the north can pop the umbrella up in the air, and it’ll hang up there for five or ten seconds, and then invariably come down point-first. Over the course of two summers I saw maybe five umbrellas “hop” like this.
As for OwC’s comment, we (the rental employees) had milk jugs full of wet sand that we’d hang from our umbrellas on the lee side, so if they popped out, they’d just flop around on the sand for a few seconds. We would also install every umbrella we rented out, to make sure that our customers didn’t end up saying our rental company’s name on the local news in a story like this one.
I worked beach stands in front of the Holiday Inn on 66th in 04
Holy crap I was worried about this the last I went to the beach in May. Maybe someone needs to come up with a method of tying your umbrella to a beach chair or bricks.
When beach umbrellas are outlawed, only outlaws will have beach umbrellas.
But if everyone had a beach umbrella and knew how to use it, incidents like this would never happen.
what about the umbrella show loophole????
This is scary considering I was just a few blocks from here on two different days last week
Sounds like the kind of unsavory umbrella one finds in OC these days. All the classy umbrellas go to DE.
Some witnesses say they saw the victim in an altercation with a short fat man in a tuxedo just moments before she was attacked. batman has been called.
Actually, kevlar would do nothing against a piercing sharp object. A compound bow and arrow can cut through kevlar with no problem.
They have these things you can screw into the ground that hold the umbrella… called a sandscrew I believe. They work great! Just sticking the umbrella into the sand was never sufficient by itself…
I used to work the beach stands in Ocean City, MD during the summers while I was in college. Nothing more terrifying than seeing an umbrella topple down the beach
Don’t get me started on umbrellas. I hate them. I started to develop something of a complex about them in high school. It was an overcrowded campus with a lot of members of a few minority demographics often described as being of a less than average height. I, on the other hand, hit 6’3″ before my freshman year. Every rainy day became a paranoid series of pick and roll move to try to avoid losing an eye or two amongst all the protruding tips of umbrella frames. I’ve never had a problem with beach umbrellas, though. I have one with an 8′ span that I tie to a portable chair when I camp in the desert. But on rainy days back in the burbs, I fully promote the unabomber chic as a functional fashion that is more convenient than slinging a ‘brolly while being much more considerate to those of us whose space you don’t realize you’re invading.
Almost happened to me once, I was at the beach with my girlfriend, I was laying down with my eyes closed, and I suddenly could tell something was blocking the sun, assuming it was just some clouds, I opened my eyes, and I saw an umbrella implanted into the ground about 6 inches from my head, and the owner running towards me hoping they didnt just kill somebody.
Judging from the way the umbrella was in the ground, I don’t think it had enough force to kill me, but definitely would have seriously messed me up.
Not on the beach, but I narrowly escaped being hit with a patio umbrella once. It’s a big heavy one and the wind would always grab it (it’s annoyingly windy here) even though I had it in a heavy iron stand. It fell over one day while I was on the patio and almost brained me.
I wish it weren’t so windy or I had a little doo-dad in my patio that would hold it. There’s NO shade back there.
You can buy a stand for it that fills with water or sand. Pool City in my area always has em, and they’re really cheap if you buy in off season
Lost in all of this is the fact that Meg has the best sense of humor and snark ability of the Consumerist editorial staff.
This is America. Clearly, all we need to do is outlaw umbrellas and this will never happen again!
All I can say is that the tag for this one fits perfectly! Oh…and ouch!