Yorktown officials address manhole cover after toddler burned at splash pad

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — A toddler was recovering Wednesday nighttime astatine Riley Hospital for Children from terrible burns to her hands and feet aft playing astatine a splash pad.

Town officials are not yet definite what whitethorn person happened.

Kai’Brea Maurice, a 17-month-old from Muncie, and her mom, Austyn Maurice, went to the caller splash pad successful Yorktown connected Monday afternoon. Austyn said Kai’Brea ran implicit to the borderline of the pad connected immoderate manhole covers. Immediately the girl’s feet started to pain and past she enactment her hands down and those were burned arsenic well.

Austyn believes it is simply a chemic burn. She said that doctors person told her they are heavy second-degree burns but haven’t determined the cause.

Yorktown Town Manager Pete Olson said Wednesday that portion the manhole covers are implicit chlorine and acerb tanks, which are required for the disinfecting process of the splash pad, they don’t look to person immoderate leaks. They are astir 6-8 inches beneath the surface. If determination was a leak, it would spell deeper underground to a containment well, not to the surface.

Officials went retired Tuesday and measured the temperature. Olson said the covers tested astatine astir 140 degrees successful the vigor of the prima compared to the factual which tested astatine 120 degrees.

On Wednesday, municipality employees painted the manhole covers achromatic to bespeak the heat. Olson said that country tested cooler than the surrounding factual aft the overgarment job.

“We were perfectly saddened. We successful nary mode envisioned this being an country that radical get wounded though things hap anytime that you’re retired and about,” Olson said. “We person individuals implicit determination and looking those areas doubly a time and making definite everything’s great. We’ll proceed to bash that.”

The splash pad conscionable opened 2 months agone and is portion of a $750,000 renovation downtown adjacent to Town Hall successful an country called the Civic Green.

Austyn told News 8 she was exhausted from the past mates days and declined an interview. She said doctors are expected to archer her Thursday if Kai’Brea needs surgery. She said physicians are hopeful due to the fact that Kai’Brea cries erstwhile her hands and feet are touched, which is simply a bully motion that apt means the nerves are inactive working.