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Accident at climbing gym 18-Feb-2003 At 8:37:16 PM Tel

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Firstly if my recollection of dates is correct , I was there at the gym after the accident had happened. Myself and a friend went in to have a look as I had never been before. To walk in and hear screaming does not instill someone with a great deal of confidence, especially a 'bumblie' like myself. The staff present were trying their best to appear calm when talking my friend and I, but I did feel that they were somewhat out of their depth.
My biggest concern was, the rest of children there, some appearing to be no older than 12 years of age, most of whom were very very distressed at what had happened. I saw one group of three outside, and one young girl was in tears on a mobile phone.
Obviously after the accident the adults were trying to take care of the young chap who was in immense pain, but the others were just left wandering for the most part and really freaking out.
Whilst attending to the injured is very important, I feel that another adult should have taken control of the other children to comfort and reassure them. My friend and I left just after the ambulance arrived.
The rest of the afternoon was spent discussing what may have caused the accident( at the time we had no information) and the role of staff in climbing gyms.Whilst my own climbing ability and experience amounts to squat, ie do I even qualify as a 'bumblie' seeing as I have never climbed outdoors, my opinions are:
That people under the age of around fifteen (possibly even older) have a great deal of impatience and relatively short attention spans. That is to say they all want to be on a wall at once and who wants to belay when you can climb. Hence the role of the staff must come into play in a much larger fashion and higher supervision required. The group size, on that day, appeared to be of around twelve young people, so can one member of staff adequately supervise that amount. Admittedly there were other adults present, but do they have knowledge of climbing and proper use of gear etc...
So what I am getting to in my roundabout way is, Staff need to realize that young people may not fully realize the consequences of bad techniques and approaches etc and, therefore, need to amp up their staff whenever such groups are there. Now before I get hammered that the young chap who got hurt was probably being an idiot etc etc, adequate Staff supervision and an intolerence by staff of such behaviour may prevent any further incidents occurring. Climbing is meant to be fun at any age but there is a responsibility that goes along with it, and staff need to ensure that people know and adhere to rules techniques etc....I assume this is the same incident as written by climber_chick......