Stormy weather in Bergen this week left a family needing to file an unusual insurance claim, after the trampoline they’d had in their yard for several years was literally lifted off its mount and carried away by gale-force winds. The flying trampoline caused a lot of damage before finally crash landing, reports newspaper Bergens Tidende.
“It was terrible,” Cesilie Brakstad, the mother in the house, told the west coast’s major newspaper.
She said she was suddenly awakened around 1am on Tuesday by a loud noise. “‘Darn,’ I thought, ‘there went my potted plants,'” she told Bergens Tidende. “But when we got up in the morning, we saw that the trampoline was gone. We ran out looking for it.”
The family’s backyard lies behind a wall, and according to Brakstad, the winds must have lifted the trampoline three meters into the air before it was then thrown another five meters and crashed into a car.
Brakstad and her children finally found the trampoline farther away, near a parking lot where it had damaged another six cars.
“Three of them had broken windows, while the other three had damage to their paint jobs,” she said. “This is extremely embarrassing.”
Brakstad, who works as a nurse, said she called police herself and reported the damage caused by her family’s flying trampoline. It had stood in their garden for several years and was mounted and secured according to instructions, she claimed, but that didn’t seem to be enough during the natural forces of this week’s unusually stormy weather over much of the country.
After calling the police, she called her insurance company. “They were so friendly and cooperative, they could hear how stressed I was,” she said. “They said they’ll cover the damage.”
Outdoor trampolines are a common sight outside Norwegian homes, after becoming very popular several years ago. Police are now advising trampoline owners to double-check their mountings.
“It’s important that they’re tied down,” said a Bergen police officer with the coincidentally relevant name of Harald Windheim. “If a trampoline were to hit a person, it could be very serious.”
Views and News from Norway/Nina Berglund
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