Toddler Suffers Second-Degree Burns From Metal Plate While Playing In Park

A mother issued warning after her 18-month-old daughter suffered second-degree burns on the bottom of her feet while playing at a park. The incident took place in Ipswich, west of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia.

Simone Pickering posted photos of the horrific injuries on social media which quickly went viral with many users expressing shock and concern over the incident. Pickering said her daughter was injured “seconds” after stepping barefoot onto a hot metal plate covering a service pit at River Heart Parklands last week.

“Our daughter just happened to walk a short distance from where myself and family were sitting to find herself paralysed, standing on one of these scorching hot metal plates unable to move due to the intensity of the heat below,” she said. “In seconds the damage had been done. We instinctively tried to get her feet into cool water only to have her hysterically screaming and needing extra care.”

The mother said the baby was recovering well following the incident; however, she had lost some feeling on the bottom of her feet.

“The drive to the hospital was the most horrific, heartbreaking 10 minutes of my life to date,” she said. “[I am] angry that even after a full recovery, our daughter will never truly know what is normal feeling in her feet as she won’t have any prior memories to draw upon being that she’s only 18 months old.”

An Ipswich City Council representative said in a statement metal plate had been coated with a heavy paving paint to keep it cooler in hot weather. The council said inspections had been carried out in other water parks across Ipswich to avoid similar situations.

The council urged parents of young children to be careful of such incidents while exposing them to such surfaces during summer.

Last summer, Dr. Sebastian Pfautsch, a senior researcher at Western Sydney University, studied surface temperatures at three outdoor play spaces in early learning centers in Sydney, and stated "the hottest surface that we found was 105 degrees, which was the inside part of a rubber tyre where metal was woven into the rubber — this was the record-breaking temperature."

"On summer days where you had air temperature of about mid-thirties, we found that soft fall rubber and astroturf was heating up to between 80 and sometimes above 90 degrees celsius," Pfautsch added, according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Pfautsch said at the time the university was hoping to expand its research to public playgrounds in partnership with local governments in New South Wales.

"Many people are waking up saying our playgrounds are not as safe as we thought so let's look at our playgrounds and then come up with interventions from councils to provide thermally responsible playgrounds," he said.