Fatalities on Australian theme park ride

[316Mining]

arfursleep said:

Moonhawk said:

Whist obviously terrible for those involved - I was thinking when this was announced on the BBC news this morning what relevance this has to people here in the UK.

Does the BBC go looking for bad news stories from across the globe just to fill up the air time. Are theme park accidents 'flavour of the month' or something?

People are killed in accidents day in day out all across the globe. What purpose does reporting them on the other side the globe serve (other than to skew people's perspective or perception of risk).

It's a "man bites dog" story though, go somewhere to have safe fun but don't come home tied in with that it's very rare that accidents occur in amusement parks as rides are very much designed to fail safe. That makes it "news".

Smiler incident last year at Alton was treated in similar way - although that had a direct human error element (operators deliberately reset the system to clear what they thought were false error messages) whereas this accident appears to be indirect human error (lack of maintenance, lack of observation etc).

"White English speaking people much like us die doing something we all like doing" story perhaps? Perhaps that's just too racist a view but makes you wonder. If this had happened in Bangladesh we wouldn't have heard of it and wouldn't be talking about it.

Dozens died in Pakistan violence overnight but we're not talking about it.

And this not 'run of the mill' story either. I'm guessing at least a dozen people have died in road accidents in Aus this last week, but again, no interest?

Odd world we live in.

[mjb1]

-Z- said:

Design fault IMO. Massive gaps between the slats, seems like the rubber skirt has got caught in between 2 slats and been dragged down. As per 2nd pic other rides have slats much closer together. Also too big a gap between the conveyor and subsequent disembarkation platform.

[url]



|http://thumbsnap.com/4mQtDsXn[/url]

Which way are the rafts travelling in that first picture? It looks to me like the bottom of that conveyor is facing the platform where riders get on and off, which would make it the start of the ride (rafts travelling right to left)? Which makes even less sense as the conveyor would be pulling/lifting the rafts at that point, not dragging them down into it.

I read one news article that said there was a 'near death' accident on the same ride earlier this year.

[-Z-]

mjb1 said:

Which way are the rafts travelling in that first picture? It looks to me like the bottom of that conveyor is facing the platform where riders get on and off, which would make it the start of the ride (rafts travelling right to left)? Which makes even less sense as the conveyor would be pulling/lifting the rafts at that point, not dragging them down into it.

I read one news article that said there was a 'near death' accident on the same ride earlier this year.

It's the end of the ride apparently so left to right is the direction of travel. They were about to get off, so looks like the dinghy immediately ahead has got stuck or stalled which then caused the one behind to get caught and dragged down. Awful. Much like the airline industry, every safety feature in the theme park industry is one thought up through the shedding of blood.

[316Mining]

The design of the conveyor at this Australian theme park is just mind boggling. why does it have slats, all so far spaced apart? Other parks use a belt, or slats that from a complete deck.

Thorpe Park uses belts. There's no way for their ride to 'grab' a raft in this manner.

[arfursleep]

-Z- said:

Awful. Much like the airline industry, every safety feature in the theme park industry is one thought up through the shedding of blood.

That's a very sweeping generalisation at best, and completely false at worst. Sure safety was a lesser concern previously but in the last 30 years safety is first priority when rides are designed, manufactured and operated.

Amusement rides are designed to fail safe; that is if something goes wrong/fails then the designed first outcome is a safe solution. In this case that's obviously not happened but the reasoning why will only come out in investigation.

It's odd that the slats on the conveyor are so wide, they are normally closer or a continuous belt as previously noted but this ride has been operational for a long time and will be subject to daily, weekly and monthly inspections of varying degrees.

I suspect that regular maintenance / checks were not carried out properly so a deterioration in material strength was not noticed (lot of force & weight on the belt combined with continuous immersion in chlorinated water in hot and sunny conditions will erode material quickly) until the (literally) tipping point today.

Terrible accident.

[Art0ir]

tight fart said:

Spokesman an the news "they sustained injuries that were incompatible with living "
Odd way to put it, very sad.

Like something from Brass Eye.

[316Mining]

Art0ir said:

tight fart said:

Spokesman an the news "they sustained injuries that were incompatible with living "
Odd way to put it, very sad.

Like something from Brass Eye.

sounds like he was trying to say something like 'decapitation' to me. Apparently two that were mortally injured inside the raft were strapped in and unable to move, whilst two more were found drowned under the raft.

All hear say though, no idea if fact.

[anonymous-user]

Here's an article explaining how it happened.

Been on it before and never thought anything of it, can't imagine the grief the children must be feeling having been thrown free of it.

http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/queensl...

[Colonial]

Went to uni with one of the victims.

Very sad incident.

[200bhp]

316Mining said:

sounds like he was trying to say something like 'decapitation' to me. Apparently two that were mortally injured inside the raft were strapped in and unable to move, whilst two more were found drowned under the raft.

All hear say though, no idea if fact.

A colleague's wife is a paramedic here in Oz and she says that's the official phrase for decapitation.

[spats]

Our neighbours have just moved out to Australia. They were in the park when this happened, all very sad indeed.

[Cotty]

Flipfloptrader said:

Here's an article explaining how it happened.

Been on it before and never thought anything of it, can't imagine the grief the children must be feeling having been thrown free of it.

http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/queensl...

Someone suggested that they may have been larking about to turn it over, which I didn't believe. But that looks like they were doing nothing wrong.

[316Mining]

200bhp said:

316Mining said:

sounds like he was trying to say something like 'decapitation' to me. Apparently two that were mortally injured inside the raft were strapped in and unable to move, whilst two more were found drowned under the raft.

All hear say though, no idea if fact.

A colleague's wife is a paramedic here in Oz and she says that's the official phrase for decapitation.

I'm afraid the very serious damage to the seating area of the raft that was tipped up bears this out. The conveyor had eaten chunks out of the raft, totally removing the back of two of the seats and damaging two more. Quite totally gruesome.


photos are on the web but I'm not going to go find them. (no gore, they are clean, but damage just sets your imagination off).

[saaby93]

Flipfloptrader said:

Here's an article explaining how it happened.

Been on it before and never thought anything of it, can't imagine the grief the children must be feeling having been thrown free of it.

http://www.news.com.au/national/queensland/queensl...

The article doesnt look quite right. It ignores that the conveyor belt having done its job is going down just there to return its circle
The front of the carriage begins to mount the stationary one but as it does the conveyor catches the back of it and tries to drag the tipped up carriage down - you can see in the earlier photo theres just enough room for that.
In doing that the conveyor slats are probably chopping heads like a combine harvester