Angela Day was in the kitchen when she heard glass breaking. She then saw her 5-year-old daughter, Laura, in the midst of a sea of broken glass.
“Blood was dripping from head to toe,” Day said, describing her daughter.
Laura had been skipping into the house, evidently thought the glass patio door was open and didn’t stop.
“She never fell down,” her father, Michael, said. “She just ran through it. She was left standing on the other side holding a piece of the glass.”
Laura had found a weak part of the glass and broke through it.
“That wasn’t tempered glass, obviously,” said Bobby Nobis, of Waco Glass and Mirror. “It must have been put in before the federal law went into effect.”
Since 1977, a federal law mandates that all glass installed in doors be safety glass, she said.
“Any doors older than that may very well-and probably do-contain regular glass,” which is not as safe.
Nobis said there are three kinds of safety glass.
Most patio doors today are made from tempered glass: “Tempered is the kind that crumbles in little bitty pieces once it’s penetrated,” she said. “It breaks into such little pieces that you can’t get a big cut.”
Another variety of safety glass is laminated glass. Like a glass sandwich, it has a piece of plastic melded between two pieces of glass. Car windshields are laminated glass. It tends to hold together when broken.
The third variety isn’t really glass. Some windows can be made of acrylics, such as plexiglass.
Tempered glass comes in standard sizes for patio doors, and it’s the safety glass most often used for them.
“Tempered glass has a logo on one corner or another. It’s not real visible, but it’s there.” She said the logo will say “tempered glass.”
Homeowners, Nobis said, should consider replacing any regular window glass in older patio doors with a safer variety. Tub enclosures and shower doors also are covered by the law requiring safety glass.
The Days have advice for other families with sliding glass patio doors.
“We’ve told everybody to check the doors and put something at eye level” to help alert children that the door is closed, Angela Day said. Some stores sell decals that can be applied to the glass.
The Days say they have replaced the patio door with a French door that has small, visible panes.
