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Accident at Alton Towers

mouse

mouse

Giga Poster
I highly doubt they would scrap it, but I guess its good to show the GP that it is being considered.
The rider supposedly losing a leg is being continually reported, which is terrible news if it is confirmed to be true. Hopefully all of the victims will get the compensation they deserve.
 
robbeal

robbeal

Hyper Poster
^Sadly, that was one of my first thoughts when suggestion of 'serious', 'horrific' and 'life-changing' injuries came up. There seems to be more and more mention of losing either a leg or a foot being mentioned. Pretty damn horrific outcome of that turns out to be true. Thoughts are with those involved.
 
silenthillXD

silenthillXD

Hyper Poster
Whilst we're talking about staff, I know everyone keeps mentioning most staff don't stay on for more than a season, but every time I have been, the Smiler staff has mostly been unchanged. And the staff actually operating the control booth have been the same few every time i've been.
 
Nemesis Inferno

Nemesis Inferno

Strata Poster
Mysterious Sue said:
Well I imagine it's true if the BBC are reporting it. If so, that's **** outrageous!
Click to expand...

Not really, because they state that they have to judge the incident first before contacting the services so:

- Control get phone call
- Control dispatch staff to the area to gather information
- After reports, they'll call 999

10 minutes to do all that is probably about average based off their procedures...
 
nemesis_guy

nemesis_guy

Roller Poster
Nemesis Inferno said:
Mysterious Sue said:
Well I imagine it's true if the BBC are reporting it. If so, that's **** outrageous!
Click to expand...

Not really, because they state that they have to judge the incident first before contacting the services so:

- Control get phone call
- Control dispatch staff to the area to gather information
- After reports, they'll call 999

10 minutes to do all that is probably about average based off their procedures...
Click to expand...

Yes but it doesn't take a genius to work out it's pretty serious. I'm surprised no members of the public made the call...

And given the nature of the incident the Fire and Rescue Service should have been requested during the initial call... regardless of Alton having their own 'response' or 'rescue' people
 
Mysterious Sue

Mysterious Sue

Strata Poster
Really, no member of staff on site with a walkie talkie/mobile? I don't think it should have taken that long. 10 minutes is a very long time in that kind of situation.
 
Nemesis Inferno

Nemesis Inferno

Strata Poster
Mysterious Sue said:
Really, no member of staff on site with a walkie talkie/mobile? I don't think it should have taken that long. 10 minutes is a very long time in that kind of situation.
Click to expand...

Staff shouldn't have phones (apart from management), and you need to do it through the proper channels, otherwise you might end up with several people phoning up for the same thing...

Can't blame the park for following their emergency procedure...
 
nemesis_guy

nemesis_guy

Roller Poster
Nemesis Inferno said:
Mysterious Sue said:
Really, no member of staff on site with a walkie talkie/mobile? I don't think it should have taken that long. 10 minutes is a very long time in that kind of situation.
Click to expand...

Staff shouldn't have phones (apart from management), and you need to do it through the proper channels, otherwise you might end up with several people phoning up for the same thing...

Can't blame the park for following their emergency procedure...
Click to expand...

If several people ended up phoning it doesn't really matter.
 
furie

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
Nemesis Inferno said:
Someone posted a pic of the CCTV coverage on Smiler:

mMjEsXL.jpg

Photo by jackandylan123 - Dan Cotton

It does cover the Knot (CAM 9) area, but of course whether they had noticed prior to dispatching the loaded train is another matter... Operators do have enough to focus on without keeping an insanely close eye on these screens...
Click to expand...

They had ten or fifteen minutes with the ride stopped to look... It's not like they were busy dispatching trains.

The whole thing seems really fishy. Don't notice the stalled train and then don't notice the crash for ten minutes? Really..?
 
spicy

spicy

Giga Poster
I agree it does seem fishy, I would hate to think that anyone did this deliberately.

Maybe the lift hill restarted on its own? Who knows..

I hope they release the full details of what happened when they find out though.
 
furie

furie

SBOPD
Staff member
Administrator
Moderator
I think it's pretty much what has been said - complacency. The ride breaks so often that people aren't taking it as seriously as they should and miss the vital things.

Obviously we don't know everything, but if it was clearly a system error then the park wouldn't have to remain closed pending an okay. Blackpool had the crash on Big Dipper and they stayed open - they new what the fault was and it was isolated to that ride. This looks like it must go a little deeper and there are concerns about operations across the park [/speculation]
 
SilverArrow

SilverArrow

Certified Ride Geek
The whole emergency service thing is a classic moan for accidents at public/tourist places as you could always have done it a little bit faster than you did. I expect they had to send people round to get closer (which is no easy task) to decide whether it only required the park first aiders or whether an external ambulance and further assistance was required. There may be been some mistakes with the procedure but I wouldn't start thinking the accident was deliberate because of a 10 minute delay. Maybe their procedures aren't up to what they should be but 10 minutes goes fast when everyone is confused and panicking as this is obviously an extremely rare event.

It has been stated many times that the location of the cars made it hard for people to access them so this would have gone for initially accessing the injuries too. Of course maybe they need to rethink their procedures if what happened is found to have been inadequate.
 
Slayed

Slayed

Hyper Poster
I'm quite shocked at the usefulness of that CCTV - the fidelity of the Knot footage looks rubbish!

Once the stalled train stopped moving it wouldn't exactly stand out.

Based on that I reckon they'll have to put some form of tracking in before they can reopen it. Makes you wonder about Saw as well (although it is far less prone to stalling).

I also think a rename is likely - "Smiler" doesn't exactly seem appropriate any more.
 
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