Ocean City Hears Warning About Windblown Beach Umbrellas

Ed Quigley once thought it was safe for beachgoers to simply jab their umbrellas into the sand and wiggle them around until they seemed firmly anchored from the wind.

But all that changed in 2015 when Quigley was seriously injured after a windblown umbrella impaled his left eye and penetrated his brain cavity while he was vacationing with his family in Bethany Beach, Delaware.

“I died on the operating table, but they were able to bring me back,” he recalled of how he was revived at a hospital.

Now, Quigley uses his own tragic experience to raise awareness of the dangers of windblown beach umbrellas while speaking in different shore communities.  On Thursday night, he appeared at a City Council meeting in Ocean City to urge city officials to place “Beach Umbrella Warning” signs at the entrances to the beach.

Quigley offered to give the 12-inch-by-18-inch aluminum signs to the city for free. They depict a beachgoer being impaled by a windblown umbrella and ominously warn, “You can be killed too!” The signs offer tips for properly anchoring umbrellas in the beach sand.

Ocean City currently doesn’t have any umbrella warning signs on its beaches, but it would be something the city would consider to enhance safety, city spokesman Doug Bergen said.

“Public safety will always be a priority,” Bergen said in an email Friday.

Bergen said he wasn’t aware of any umbrella-related injuries occurring in Ocean City, N.J., although he does remember getting inquiries after a serious accident in Ocean City, Maryland, a few years ago.

Ocean City, N.J., has an ordinance limiting the size of beach umbrellas and canopies, but not their placement, Bergen said.

Quigley, who lives in Richmond, Virginia, grew up in New Jersey and spent decades vacationing on the beaches.

    Ed Quigley holds up an example of a "Beach Umbrella Warning" sign while addressing City Council.
  

After his accident in Delaware, he was invited to be part of a task force of the American Society for Testing and Materials that worked with the Consumer Product Safety Commission to develop more rigorous safety standards for beach umbrellas. The standards were published in 2024.

“We spent two years testing beach umbrellas on beaches and in wind tunnels to develop scientific data to understand what is necessary to protect a beach umbrella from flying down the beach,” he said during the City Council meeting.

Quigley explained that the previous guidance from the Consumer Product Safety Commission was to “take your beach umbrella, stab it into the sand, rock it back and forth and tilt it into the wind.”

“That has proven to be ineffective and dangerous,” he said.

Quigley said beachgoers have died from being struck or impaled by airborne umbrellas. Each year, thousands more are injured, he added.

“Most of them don’t make the national news or some not even the local news,” he said of the accidents. The hospitals are responsible for reporting them to a government database, but it’s very underreported.”

He remains hopeful that the new safety standards by the Consumer Product Safety Commission will inform the public of the dangers of windblown beach umbrellas.

“I did not know it was dangerous until I had my accident,” he said.

Wanting to give the public more information about beach umbrella safety, Quigley created the website https://www.beachumbrellasafety.org/.

    These are the umbrella warning signs that Ed Quigley wants to see placed at Ocean City's beaches.