Potential to be deadly

April 17, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Mowing safely requires serious approach

McClatchy Newspapers

AKRON

Roxy Kimberlin describes herself as an overprotective mother, the one her friends make fun of.

But even her attentiveness wasn’t enough to protect her son, Conner, from a lawn-mower accident that nearly amputated his leg a little more than a year ago.

Conner was 5 when he was playing in his Doylestown, Ohio, yard with his siblings and neighbors on St. Patrick’s Day 2010, with his mom outside watching. In the adjoining yard, a neighbor was mulching leaves with a riding mower.

Suddenly two of the children ran out in front of the mower. Conner jumped off the glider where he was sitting to try to run after them, but he slipped. The mower blade caught his foot and pulled his entire body under the machine.

By what his mother insists was God’s grace, his sturdy sneaker jammed the blade and saved his life. Nevertheless, the damage was extensive. Before it jammed, the blade cut nearly all the way through Conner’s right leg, caused a spiral fracture of the femur and also broke bones in his foot and toes, Roxy Kimberlin said.

“I just never thought it would happen to us,” she said. “I was right there.”

Conner is one of about 9,400 people age 20 and younger who are injured by lawn mowers each year, according to a study published in 2006 in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

At 11 injuries for every 100,000 children, mower accidents are hardly common. “But talk to the families that have had this happen to them. It’s devastating,” said Mark Adamczyk, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon at Akron Children’s Hospital.

And it’s almost always preventable, he said.

Dr. Adamczyk believes one of the contributing factors is the casualness with which many users regard lawn mowers. Most people use them for years without a problem, he said, so it’s easy to forget how hazardous they can be.

But in fact, mowers are dangerous — even potentially deadly — for children and adults alike.

Hot surfaces can cause contact burns. Mower blades can hack limbs. Gasoline can catch fire or explode. Objects thrown by spinning blades can hit with the force of a gunshot.

Dr. Adamczyk and his fellow orthopedic surgeons at Children’s Hospital have seen the traumatic results.

“We see at least a couple of kids [a year] who are mangled up pretty good,” he said.

Often those serious injuries involve amputations or deep cuts contaminated by grass, dirt or gravel — usually to the ankle or foot and sometimes higher on the leg.

One child was treated at Children’s Hospital several years ago after being punctured in the chest by a piece of metal catapulted by a mower blade.

It’s not just the children who are affected, he said. Often the adults operating the mowers are left with crushing guilt.

What troubles Dr. Adamczyk is that the number of injures remains about the same year after year.

To him, that indicates that word isn’t getting out about mower hazards, that nothing’s being done to improve the situation.

One common scenario is people failing to see children behind them when they’re backing their riding mowers, he said.

That’s what happened to Ellet, Ohio, resident Evan Kerr, who lost three toes when his foot was run over by a mower driven by his father, Jon.

When the accident happened last May, Jon Kerr was mowing his parents’ lawn in Hartville, Ohio, while they were out of town, his wife, Brianne, said.

Evan, then 3, was on a bench on the front porch with his aunt.

When she went inside to get him a drink, Evan headed for the backyard with the hope of getting a ride on the mower, Brianne Kerr said. His father didn’t know he was there. He looked behind him when he put the mower in reverse, but Evan was so small that Jonathan Kerr couldn’t see him.

He heard a noise and thought he’d run over a tennis ball. “When he looked back, he found his [Evan’s] shoe,” Brianne Kerr said.

“He saw it just in time” to stop the mower from backing completely over the boy.

Her voice quavered as she recalled the accident.

She tries to remind herself that the results could have been much worse, she said.

And she hopes the experience will save other families from the same heartache. She echoes Dr. Adamczyk’s caution to make sure children are inside when a mower is in use and are supervised so they don’t wander outdoors unnoticed.

Even if they don’t approach the mower, they’re at risk of being hit by projectiles from the mower blades if they’re in the vicinity, Dr. Adamczyk noted.

“I would just not let my kids outside, period,” Brianne Kerr said. “Ever.”