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Parents: Toddler recovering from 2nd degree burns on feet from Greenwood splash pad

GREENWOOD, Ind. (WISH) — A toddler is recovering from second-degree burns, and his parents say those burns happened at the city of Greenwood’s splash pad playground.

The burns are on the bottom of the boy’s feet. A family friend told 24-Hour News 8 the burns occurred when the toddler ran barefoot onto a playground near the splash pad. She said it only took a couple of minutes before the boy’s feet were red and blistered.

“Oh my gosh, it just breaks your heart… he was just screaming and screaming,” said a friend of the toddler’s mom.

She says she was at the splash pad with her kids when her friend’s son ran from the splash pad area to the playground.

She said the dark material under the playground was so hot that it caused the burns on the bottom of that toddler’s feet.

“After he got hurt, I went over and put my foot on the material to see if that’s what it was and sure enough, yeah, I couldn’t even hold my foot to it. It was so hot,” said the friend.

Now she wants to see the city do something to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

“Ideally, there needs to be a sign warning people how hot that material gets,” said the friend.

She also contacted the city in hopes that they will look into replacing the surface under the playground with something that won’t get as hot.

“We are still under the process of reviewing and taking steps and figuring out what we need to do for that surface,” said Rob Taggart, Greenwood’s Parks and Recreation department director.

Some parents say they know how hot the playground surface can get, so they already take extra precautions with their kids and don’t think the city needs to do anything else.

“We make sure that her shoes are always on… definitely we know that surfaces are going to be hot, like the slide and the sidewalk and stuff,” said Kaici Bober.

“Obviously we all have common sense. We know that material gets hot when it’s sitting in the sun, but material underneath a children’s play area should be safe for children to play on because it is not just about their feet. If a kid falls, their hands or their face or their arms,” said the friend.

The director of the Greenwood Parks and Recreation Department tells me that this is the only reported incident of a child burning his or her feet on the playground since it opened about five years ago.

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