When the news of two children have died and several others have been seriously injured after a bouncy castle was blown 10m into the air at a primary school in Devonport, Tasmania flashed in TV on 16 December, I was instantly reminded of Devonport. We passed through this small town at the north of Tasmania a few times in our driving tour in Tasmania in April 2019.
I was curious to find out what kind of wind speed was able to lift a bouncy castle some ten meters into the air. A check indicated that many parts of Tasmania do experience gusty wind. Malaysia has an annual wind speed of just 1.8 m/s while Kota Kinabalu has an average wind speed is 2 m/s. Devonport however has an average wind speed of 20 m/s. Devonport is indeed a windy town!
On the day of accident, it was reported that Devonport Airport had a wind speed of 1.9 m/s at 9.30am. It then increased to 3.6 m/s. By the afternoon, the wind speed picked up and peaked at 8.3 m/s. The freak accident which happened at around 10am was attributed to change of wind direction and speed.
The reported wind speed at the day of the freak accident appeared to be much lower than the wind speed of a hurricane. Category 1 hurricane is declared if a sustained wind speed of 119 Km/hour or 33.1 m/s is reached. By coincidence, building structures in KK are designed to a maximum wind speed of 33.1 m/s!
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