Ice sends many slip-sliding into ERs

There was the woman who went flying 8 feet into the air on an inner tube and crash-landed in a frozen marsh. There was the dad who slipped and bruised his ribs while shoveling, then burned himself after he fell asleep on a heating pad. Then there was the elderly man on blood-thinning medication who bled profusely after slipping on the ice and cutting his head.

Across the region, young and old alike have been streaming into emergency rooms with broken wrists, fractured legs, cracked ribs, crushed fingers, concussions, sore backs, and bleeding heads since last week's ice storm turned the region into a rock-hard, slick obstacle course. Formerly gentle slopes for sledding are creating speeds that approach those of luge runs. Sledders who crash are finding out the hard way that ice is unforgiving. And pedestrians on sidewalks are not faring much better.

Boston Medical Center has treated about 40 people who broke bones and bruised bodies on the ice in the last week. Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have treated about 30 people each day who have fallen on the ice, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital has treated another 20 to 30 people a day since last Wednesday's storm. Officials say the numbers are twice as high as during a normal winter week.

"We've seen a dramatic increase," said Dr. Ron Walls , chairman of emergency medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who said he has noted a particularly worrisome increase in the number of elderly falling and injuring their heads on icy sidewalks and stairs. "The reason is the ice is just so slick."

Another reason for the increase, officials say, is that the icing of the region, unlike other kinds of extreme weather such as a blizzard, is not keeping people confined. People are going about their business and in some cases seeking thrills on frozen fields and hard, high hills that offer the fastest runs.

The deluge of injuries is spurring a push for legislation to make children wear helmets while skiing or sledding, modeled after a similar law requiring protective headgear for young bicyclists, inline skaters, and skateboarders.

Locally, the most serious injury happened Sunday at the Mount Hood Golf Course in Melrose, where the woman who had gone sledding with her children crashed on an inner tube. The 39-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, was flown by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was treated for head trauma, injuries to her back and leg, and hypothermia. It was the second injury at the course over the weekend and city officials shut the park and posted a police officer there to keep children and parents away. Signs there already warn them that they sled at their own risk.

"It's just treacherous," said Captain Ed Collina of the Melrose Fire Department. "Anybody sledding has absolutely no control of themselves. They're at the whim of the slope. Even if you're walking and you slip and fall it's like hitting concrete."

Even so, a half-dozen sledders were at the 300-acre park yesterday, whizzing down icy hills when no police officer was present to stop them. None of them wore helmets.

"There's a couple spots here that you have to learn how to go down," said Dave Coates, a 46-year-old plumber who grew up sledding at Mount Hood and was there yesterday with his sons, ages 9 and 11. "I know where to sled and where to stay away from. If you start to get out of control, you just jump off."

At another popular spot, Larz Anderson Park in Brookline, town officials were asking sledders yesterday to keep away from one of the steeper hills because it was too dangerous. Sledders zipped down another hill near a baseball field. Few said they were worried about injuries.

"You think about it and so many people go sledding, and only a few people get hurt," said Julia Wood, 12, of Dover. "You just have to be careful."

Senator Steven C. Panagiotakos, Democrat of Lowell , said it is not enough to be careful, and will push for a law this year requiring children under 13 who ski or sled to wear helmets. A similar bill died last year in committee. "Most kids ride bikes, so almost every kid has a bicycle helmet and they could use that for sledding, too," Panagiotakos said yesterday. "It's not like it's an extra cost to the family."

At White Birches Golf Course in Bar Harbor, Maine, on Saturday, a 57-year-old woman, Elizabeth Mitchell, died from a broken neck after she went sledding with her grandchild and struck a tree.

Terri Lutkus of Lowell called Governor Deval Patrick's office this week to ask him to support Panagiotakos's bill after she heard about a 10-year-old boy who was seriously injured while sledding at South Common in Lowell on Sunday.

Her grandson, Shawn Clougherty , now 8, fractured his skill and suffered bleeding on his brain after he struck a stone wall while sledding in Shedd Park in Lowell last year. He now requires braces to walk, she said. "If they had helmets on like they do when they ride bikes that might prevent some of these injuries," Lutkus said yesterday.

April Simpson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com.