A 0 Baby Stroller Comes Out of the Rubble and Into the Spotlight

It is impossible to say with certainty that the Mountain Buggy Urban Double Stroller - which costs roughly half the monthly rent of a small Brooklyn apartment - actually saved Abigail Lurensky, 7 months old, as a Manhattan building collapsed around her on Thursday.

Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

The Mountain Buggy Urban Double Stroller, third from left, on display at Albee Baby Carriage on Amsterdam Avenue at 95th Street.

But it didn't hurt.

As word spread yesterday of the stroller's role in protecting Abigail, the building collapse added even more cachet to the carriage, the 0-plus Hummer of the Sidewalk S.U.V. set. With their maneuverability and inflatable tires providing a smooth ride over potholes, cobblestones and sandy sidewalks, the Urban Double strollers are popular with the affluent, especially those with beach houses.

Albee Baby Carriage, the city's largest dealer of Mountain Buggy strollers, which is six blocks from the site of the collapse on Broadway at 100th Street on the Upper West Side, expects a 500-stroller shipment in August to sell out within weeks. Even before its presumed heroic role, the stroller was quite popular, said Frank DeMato, the store's manager in charge of Internet sales.

Still, Molly Smith Simon, a lawyer from Brooklyn who had just bought a 0 stroller from Albee, is skeptical. She doubts she needs such an industrial-strength stroller for either Eamon, 9 months, or Una, 4.

"I looked at the stroller that saved the baby's life," she said, "but I don't think it's that likely that I'm going to get stuck under a collapsing building."

Nonetheless, in the niche market of expensive-stroller makers like Bugaboo, which has a 0 model; Peg Perego; and Inglesina, Mountain Buggy sells in the tens of thousands a year (its importer will not be more specific). The national market for strollers is about four million a year. Most sell for considerably less than 0.

On the day that baby Abigail and others were injured, the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced a product recall of an Urban Double model.

Alan Jurysta, president of Sycamore Kids of Denver, the exclusive importer of the strollers, observed that the recalled version was the 2005 Urban Double, not the 2004 that was in the collapse.

Moreover, the feature that prompted the government recall was a new adjustable handlebar that sometimes separated when the stroller was pulled up stairs. There have been no reports of injuries, child or adult.

The structure of the Urban Double is sound, Mr. Jurysta said. The frame of the 35-pound stroller is made of a single piece of aluminum alloy, and the design resembles the strong A-frame of a house, he said.

Joan Muratore, the Consumer Reports researcher who tests strollers and other baby products, said the seat-belt system of the stroller might have been more important than the frame. "It may have held the baby in as the debris fell," she said.

Whatever the case, Mr. Jurysta and Tritec Manufacturing of Lower Hutt, New Zealand, the maker of the stroller, are elated at the publicity. (They have also made arrangements to replace the stroller for the Lurensky family.)

Jesse Muru Paenga, the chief engineer for Tritec, Mr. Jurysta said, was "just over the moon that they saved the baby." He also asked Mr. Jurysta for a favor. When city agencies like the Buildings Department complete their investigation, Mr. Jurysta would like the crumpled Urban Double so he can send it to New Zealand for research. "Jesse thinks it's quite an engineering challenge and wants to see if some design improvements might be possible," Mr. Jurysta said.

And then? "They're thinking of putting it in some sort of company museum," he said.