When ancient memorials can present a risk to life when children are playing
What happened?
An 8 year old was playing with a group of boys in a Scottish cemetery. One of his friends had jumped on a gravestone to try to get on to a wall. He saw a tree they wanted to climb, the tree was next to a big stone. They all jumped from the tree at the same time. The gravestone fell on the boy, and killed him.
The gravestone struck the boy on the top of his head, then landed on his chest, shoulder and upper abdomen causing injuries to his aorta and liver. The death was the subject of an inquiry at a Scottish Sheriff Court.
An expert stonemason told the court that ‘very little force’ would have been enough to topple the headstone. He said a nearby tree’s roots forced the memorial to lean forward but concluded: “If left without any remedial action it would have eventually failed at some point.”
He said the angle of lean on the stone was between eight and eight and a half degrees, and he would assess the particular stone as a potential danger if the angle of lean was about six degrees.
The stonemason was asked what he meant by ‘very little force’ and he said: “Perhaps even a strong gust of wind, ground heave, frost and thaw actions.” Asked if he would have passed it as safe. He said: “No. I would have immediately fenced it off.”
The inquiry established that there did not seem to be any formal inspections undertaken before the fatality, but there were inspections on an ad hoc basis.’ There was, however, no record of checks being carried out at the cemetery where the boy died.
A Council employee told the inquiry in the days after the boy’s death, across the authority between five and nine hundred headstones were laid flat over safety concerns. It also emerged that another boy was injured by a headstone in the same cemetery five years previously.
Legal Outcome
N/A.
What can we learn from what happened?
In recent (say 20) years, there has been some media attention drawn to the issue of the safety of gravestones, and specifically the suggestion (by the media) that an over-zealous approach was being taken by health and safety people regarding whether a gravestone could be toppled or not, and maybe even money was being made by opportunist safety consultants. Whether there was any credibility in the media’s concerns is not obvious, and whether it was this tragic accident that sparked the reaction is not known.
Either way, gravestones can be exceptionally heavy, and many are very, very old. And as we know, children will play, and this includes in cemeteries. So, reasonable precautions need to be taken to keep children reasonably safe. This doesn’t necessarily mean flattening them all just in case, but it does mean carrying out a programmed, structured test carried out at an appropriate frequency, with risk factors considered and action being taken as needed.
Source of Information
BBC News Online