Posted on 06/11/2007 9:15:04 AM PDT by John Cena
(AP) A dozen riders on an Arkansas roller coaster spent half an hour hanging upside down — 150 feet above the ground — after a power outage shut down the attraction.
It took about 30 minutes for the city Fire Department to rescue the riders using a ladder truck Saturday evening, said Aundrea Crary, spokeswoman for the Springs & Crystal Falls amusement park.
Spectators cheered when the riders were brought to the ground from the highest point of a loop on the X-Coaster, but one passenger threw up after reaching safety.
The X-Coaster was one of several rides brought to a halt by the outage that originated somewhere near the park.
"You could tell who got off the (X-Coaster) because their faces were red," said Angela Salter. She was riding the Gauntlet, another coaster, and said park employees worked quickly to free her.
The park resumed normal operations, although the X-Coaster remained closed.
One X-Coaster passenger, Jay Plummer, 37, was taken to St. Joseph Mercy Medical Center in Hot Springs after complaining of neck pain and a headache.
"It was very scary," said his girlfriend, Connie McBride. "I love the amusement park, but I will never get on the X-Coaster again."
The park has experienced outages before, but usually they last only seconds, said Dan Aylward, Magic Springs president and general manager.
Entergy Corp. was investigating but crews found no faulty wiring.
"The cause could be a (tree) limb or as simple as an animal (on the lines)," said Mark Hunt, general manager of customer service for Entergy. "We could find no faults, but we are going to continue to investigate until we find the cause."
bump
Oh the hugh manatee
got drunk last night...think I woke up on a different planet.
What planet is this please? zorax589
Does anybody remember the sit-com in the early ninties starring Chris Elliott called “Get a life”? One of the episodes was about this where he and a friend were on a roller coaster and got stuck hanging upside down for hours.
Well I know that I would have required a change of clothing after such an ordeal. Sheesh.
Yes, that show rocked. Damn Fox cancelled it though, like they cancelled a bunch of other good sitcoms too (Ben Stiller show, Wanda at Large, Firefly, Dark Angel, etc.)
The pilot episode of ‘Get A Life’ has Chris coaxing his best friend, Larry, into playing hooky from work for a day. The episode is ‘Terror on the Hell Loop 2000,’ and is hilarious!
Coasters I know are pulled to the top of an incline then gravity does the rest. Wouldn’t the coaster’s momentum cause it to finish the loop and coast to a stop?
All I can think of is the coaster may have some type of safety breaking mechanism to immediately stop it during a power outage...
Arkansas politicians immediately rushed to the scene to collect the money that had fallen out of the riders pockets.
ACtually - that particular coaster is pulled up the angle you see it on and then released. It appears that this is just prior to the release (I could be wrong). I was at that park last month. The safety device wouldn’t latch around me...so I couldn’t ride.
Looks like the power died right before their center of gravity was past the chain. If the power lasted 5 more seconds they’d have probably been in the freefall section. Timing is indeed everything.
And the park did not have a source of emergency power for situations like this? The cost of paying a lawyer to defend a lawsuit is more than the cost of a moderate-size standby generator
Every individual ride should have its own backup power.
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