Posted on 06/25/2007 12:06:35 PM PDT by John Cena
(CBS/AP) Six Flags and another company shut down eight more thrill rides Friday around the country, including a ride at a North Carolina amusement park, after a teenage girl had her feet chopped off at the ankle on a Superman Tower of Power.
State inspectors, meanwhile, returned to Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, where the accident happened, to examine the ride, which lifts passengers 177 feet straight up, then drops them nearly the same distance at speeds reaching 54 mph.
It was unclear at what point during the ride the 13-year-old was injured Thursday, said Wendy Goldberg, a Six Flags spokeswoman. The girl was taken to a hospital. She was not identified and details of her condition were not immediately available Friday.
Chris Williams, who witnessed the event, told CBS affiliate WLKY that riders saw the cable break as it got to the top on the right-hand side.
Treva Smith said it snapped again as the ride descended.
"The people on the ride just came and hit the ground," Smith said.
Next, Williams said he saw the teen maimed.
"As the ride came down, the wire swung left, struck the young lady on the back side of my children," Williams said.
Williams' daughter had traded seats with the 13-year-old, and was sitting on the other side of the ride.
Smith told WLKY she raced to the ride to find members of her group who had been on it.
"When I got up there, the lady, she was just sitting there and she didn’t have no legs," Smith said. "She didn’t have no legs at all. She was just calm, probably in shock from everything."
Six Flags has shut down similar rides at parks in St. Louis, Gurnee, Ill., and near Washington as a safety precaution, Goldberg said. Six Flags Over Texas, near Dallas, also has a Superman Tower of Power, but it is not the same ride, Goldberg said.
There were no reports of injuries on the ride before Thursday, she said.
"Millions of people have safely ridden this ride in our parks," Goldberg said.
The accident led Cedar Fair Entertainment Co. to shut down and inspect drop tower rides at Carowinds in Charlotte, N.C., and other four of its other amusement parks as a precaution, company spokeswoman Stacy Frole said.
The ride lifts passengers 177 feet straight up, then drops 154 feet, reaching a speed of 54 miles per hour according to the park's Web site. It opened in 1995 and was known then as "the Hellevator," reports the Louisville Courier-Journal.
Intamin, a Swiss company, made all the rides that were closed by both companies, said Craig Ross, a spokesman for Cedar Fair.
"We're going to keep these things down until we're certain it's safe," Ross said. "We'll wait and see."
An e-mail message sent to Intamin was not immediately returned Friday.
The four other Cedar Fair rides that will be shut down are at Kings Island near Cincinnati; Canada's Wonderland, in Toronto; Kings Dominion in Doswell, Va.; and Great America in Santa Clara, Calif.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
No. I’m not splitting hairs. I understood that this is a ride where the passengers are dropped a long distance—hence the use of a cables which might snap. That seems a bit different from a rollercoaster. I could be wrong. At any rate, there’s no need to make an accusation like that.
It wasn’t a roller coaster, it was a “ride” where they drop you. The most scared I have ever been on a “ride” was at Knotts Berry Farm and it was the same kind of ride, where it takes you up really high then drops you fast. I was so scared, not my brain, but my heart. It was pounding, adrenaline was pumping. I was laughing and saying I am not really scared, I am just shaky, because I know it is SAFE. Turns out I was wrong, it wasn’t safe, it was the same kind of ride that this young girl was injure on. Scary stuff.
They couldn't find nobody better.
Don’t give me that crap about kneejerking and being responsible. I guess it’s easy to say that when it has no direct on you. But what if this had happened to a friend or family member of yours? Would you still be talking about your statistics then.
This was a 13 year old girl who got on an amusement ride, like many other 13 year old girls do. And now her life is ruined because somebody didn’t do their job.
If the pic in #29 is the ride, then they can classify it any way they want. That’s not what I call a rollercoaster, and that’s not what I expect to ride when I’m looking for a rollercoaster.
From the article: Intamin, a Swiss company, made all the rides that were closed by both companies...
I wouldn’t call it a roller coaster either but I also wouldn’t cynically correct someone who did.
I agree with YOU 100%! That is why we rarely go to amusement parks now. Disneyland is still OK but so crowded. The Six Flags parks do not do enough maintainance on their rides. They had one I think it was called the Batman Ride at Houston Astroworld (now defunct) where you had to remove earrings. Because the ride banged your head/ears into the sides of the headrest so hard that earrings would hurt you. It was a great ride when new, but instead of replacing the foam that surrounded the head/ears - they just made you take off earrings. They just didn’t do the maintainance and the rides got bumpier and even painful. The good old wooden rollercoaster was good though. They are supposed to be bumpy.
At Disneyworld last year we rode the ride that two people have died on. It simulates a landing on Mars. I swear if it had lasted one more second my chest would have exploded. It was too real.
You are RIGHT!
I think it's a lot like when you break spaghetti strands into smaller pieces, tough to bend until one breaks, then they all break. And while it is tough to break steel cable, it does happen.
And from the images I saw on TV, it was the cable itself that snapped. Having taken physics classes in High School, I remember enough to steer clear of anything where my life depends on a hydraulic line or a cable swooshing me about in the air.
The safety factor is the ratio of designed breaking strength to the maximum expected load. Generally, the load is limited to the working load, which is generally less than the maximum expected load. The working load is called the safe load.
" It's hard to see how a multi-thread wire cable would snap."
They do snap. Generally wear, fatigue and strain in the outer fibers result in a higher stress on the inside fibers. If the cable isn't lubed right, or is subjected to a kink, or small radius bend, they tend to snap. When cables and ropes break under stress, they are like bull whips. All the energy that was in the cable before the break ends up as motion of the cables. Since the riders saw the broken cable before it dropped, it looks like it broke at, or near an attachment point where it was crimped, or subjected to fiber movement and subsequent damage from friction. Crimps tend to strain outer fibers and increase the frictional force between fibers adjacent to the crimp.
Sad something like this would happen. I think it was easily preventable.
Elevators have emergency mechanisms built-in, and I’m sure this ride did also. The young lady was evidently injured by a broken cable, had it been an uncontrolled fall most likely everyone onboard would have been killed or injured.
I stick to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride from now on...
Werd
13 year olds die in the bathtub, they die or are severely injured in car accidents, they are mamed or die on playgrounds! They get mamed and die in airplanes, on sidewalks, on monkey bars, playing dodge ball, playing volleyball, basketball, softball... etc etc etc..You are knee jerking foolishly.
You are running around screaming as though the ride was inherently dangerous, or that the designers intentionally built or the operators intentionally maintained it to be so.
This is foolishness. Your defense of your foolishness is even more foolishness.
I pulled my calf 2 weeks ago just running across the basketball court... I broke my arm as a child playing on my swingset.... I dislocated my kneecap on two different occassions playing sports... Would you claim that basketball or softball or volleyball are inheritly dangerous? And go on some diatribe against ball makers and retailers? How about being a passenger in a car? Far more kids mamed and killed doing that, which every kid does every day, than any other .... you going to tyrade against the auto dealers and manufacturers?
Facts are simple, systems fail... ALL systems fail. Its not fair, but its inevitable. Every machine EVER built will fail, its only a question of when and how. Designers and builders of amusement park rides take insane precautions to minimize the risk posed in the event of a failure, but there is no such thing as a 100% safe system, EVER. If you think you are guaranteed safety in life in ANYTHING you do, you are an idiot.
Obviously this girl, nor anyone else who got on this ride expected to get harmed, and expected to have a fun ride and get off and go to the next one... its the sheer fact that these rides are designed so safely that that is indeed what the overwhelming number of people expect and have happen. In fact as an industry, injuries on rides at permanent amusement parks are insanely rare, you are far more at odds to get hurt or killed flying or driving to the park than you are on any ride in it. Even so, like it or not, sometimes bad things happen.
Time will tell if this was a design, or a maintenance or some other catastrophic event that lead to this tragedy.. However to just rant against amusement parks or ride manufacturers over something like this with no facts or anything else is just foolishness.
Tell you what, next time a jetliner fails, and comes plummeting to the earth, I want to make sure I see and hear your outrage about how inept the engineers, builders and maintenance personel are.. the next time a car wrecks I want to hear you ranting about those horrible engineers and workers who built the car... etc etc etc.
It seems the number one source of accidents is those moon bounce rides getting picked up by the wind and killing the occupants.
I never would have thought of a moon bounce as a particulary dangerous ride.
Meanwhile, I see one of the parks I’m scheduled to visit in August had a roller coaster derailment (Geauga Lake). I hope they have it fixed. We went to ride SOn of the beast last year but it was closed because some of the supports broke — and now they’ve removed the loop, which was the cool thing (a looping wooden coaster).
I also see another coaster we are riding in August had a small collision, but it seems to be back operational.
My kids were on the Drop Zone at Kings Dominion in Va. Thursday the 14th. They’ve shut that down, but frankly there are no cables anywhere near the riders on that one, the cables are inside the enclosed center of the ride, and the cables don’t move after the riders are dropped. I love that ride.
We will end up attending 6 or 7 theme parks this year (depending on whether we have time to go back to Hershey Park).
This will be our first trip to Cedar Point. They have a 420-foot coaster I’m scared to death to ride but I’ll probably ride it anyway — don’t know if my two children will join me or not.
Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed today? You’re awfully (pointlessly) argumentative. I hope the rest of your day goes better.
That's a similar ride that has been redesigned to be safer. The ride that severed the teen's feet looked like this one. Notice the long exposed cable that runs the full length of the ride on the right hand side that is supported only at the top and bottom.
That is a “similar” ride with the Superman name at another Six Flags park (Texas in this case). The Texas Superman ride is made by a different company than the ride on which the accident occurred.
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