The Dreamworld River Rapids Disaster | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
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- Опубліковано 9 лис 2020
- "On the 25th of October 2016 at the Dreamworld theme park in Australia, a river rapids ride malfunctioned..."
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I have a shirt from my trip to Dreamworld from 20 years ago that says "I survived Thunder River Rapids"
It's quite sad and ironic now.
Oh god... please never wear that shirt again 😔
oh damn, that shirt didn't age well.
Ironic =/= fitting
How much do you want for it?
@@Cynder44 I'll say. It's size M, it doesn't fit me at all anymore
When witnesses need counseling, you know it's bad.
When paramedics need counseling, you know it's fucking horrific.
I can't imagine how counseling is going to help you, minus going over it until it's mentally old news and you move on.
@Abrupt Segue Yeah, I've always felt bad for first-responders. The things they see, they're awful
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 You don’t know how counselling could help because you imagine it’s just going over something over and over again, and you don’t immediately think it’s because your understanding of counselling might be incomplete?
Paramedics should constantly have counselling, unless they’re psychopaths or have an exceptional support network. No human is designed to witness that concentration of human suffering.
@@o5-7firefox I’ve always felt that we see those things so the majority of people don’t have to. I actually think it’s a shame that TV & movies etc are becoming so realistic & that actual deaths & dead bodies are creeping into YT & onto the news & current affairs, because I don’t think the average person needs to see the reality of what we do.
I remember when this happened. That’s when I learned the technical phrase “incompatible with life”.
Usually, paramedics do not pronounce a patient dead because it’s more difficult to verify such things out in the wild and there’s always a chance that a patient may be resuscitated at the hospital.
However.. some injuries are so severe that there is no chance in the world that the victim survived. Hence, paramedics will declare someone to have suffered wounds that are “incompatible with life”.
Yes, generally a euphemism for decapitated or dismembered.
I didn't actually know this detail, thanks for clarifying. I think another reason paramedics don't declare death is because legally only a licensed doctor can officially pronounce a patient dead. Might be wrong on that, but that was my understanding.
Death on arrival is a thing, sadly enough...
@@FoxSullivan DOA means the absence of a heartbeat/respiration upon arrival at the hospital, not necessarily legal death. there are cases of DOA patients living to tell about it
@@PiraticalNonsense as a former paramedic, you're completely correct. "Incompatible with life" means that by their observation there isn't a chance of survival without them actually making the call on declaring them dead. This is just a very sad story.
Have been on that ride so many times.
Dreamworld initially tried to blame a young girl ride operator, she was never shown how or when to use the emergency shut down.
My cousin worked there as a ride operator and I'm blown away by his stories.
You mind sharing some stories? I love learning about what happens behind the scenes
@@T3noir He was paid fuck all as most of them were, they did theory training and the practical training received was much like the young girl who operated this ride it was rushed and dodgy.
I'd heard about harnesses not locking into place, but they still had the seat belt back up so it was fine.
most of the operators are highschool/just graduated age. It shouldnt be on them to learn the emergancy procedures themselves. I simply cannot understand why they were never taught any of this.
But i also have a lot of memories as a kid going on this ride, it was even my families favourite ride from Dreamworld, its always crazy to think about how this couldve happened at any point. Knowing what we know now its hard to believe an incident didnt happen earlier at Dreamworld.
Vicarious liability means the owner, supervisor and those in authority are the ones responsible for the actions of an employee if that employee acts in accordance with the training provided to them.
@@MrAshyb87 Back in my day, the rafts didn't have harnesses, just big lap-sash blue velcro belts!
The conveyor belts at the checkouts in my local supermarket stop automatically if they become obstructed.
There is literally better protection in place for my eggs.
I know I really shouldn't have laughed, but that last line was great.
Yeah, this was disgusting. I'm surprised no safety inspector caught that THERE WAS NO STOP MECHANISM. Corporate short-term thinking in a nutshell.
Everything of this nature has to have a safety loop with various switches, where any one switch pressed/tripped makes the loop go open circuit and the whole ride shuts down. That and the water level by design should have never been allowed to dip below the level of the conveyor even if the pumps both stopped. I visited this park once when younger.
The problem is that while operating normally the motors that drive the conveyor have to make a lot of power and torque to pull these tubes loaded with people out of the ride and up the ramp. Sometimes they are pulling multiple tubes loaded with several passengers each. The load on the conveyor can vary greatly at different times. Driving one tube into a second one with enough force to flip them, smash them together and then grind up the people unfortunate enough to have fallen on the belt is probably all well within it's normal torque operating limits. The failure is that the ride operators were not taught the proper procedures on how to stop the conveyor in case of an emergency like this. There should have been multiple, redundant red e-stop buttons located around the platform for both the conveyor and the rotating platform. And also if one of the water pumps shut down the ride should be stopped immediately. But even still, ride operators who are trained properly would never allow something like this to happen. The operators hitting the e-stop should be your last line of defense against an accident like this, but to not train them about this is straight up negligence.
yes years later in entirely different situations yes
Incredible !!!
What's really depressing is the 12-year-old girl blames herself for her mother's death after she had begged to go on the River Rapids. She is not only dealing with the trauma of what happened, but survivor's guilt, and I really just want to hug her.
Oh that's horrible ;_;
beyond horrible
that’s devastating. if I blamed myself for ANYONE’S death I think I’d eventually go insane. poor girl.
That poor girl... I couldn't imagine. I hope she finds some peace in her mind soon.
How do you know this? That’s awful
"The recovery of the bodies was so traumatic that even some of the paramedics needed counseling afterwards." What a horrible and preventable tragedy. Those children that survived are going to carry that trauma with them.
What makes it so much worst for those kids is the adults killed where their perants.
@@captainquark9116 Because I wanted to comment on it. You don't like it, move on
This was preventable this still doesn't mean it wasn't a horrible recovery that scarred the paramedics
@@peyteneq5301 no it doesn't. No one said it didn't. It was preventable and scarred the paramedics. Both are true
@@pilar9247 I'm not saying you said that 💀 I'm just saying something on my mind
I think one of the most horrifying parts of this tragedy is that, reportedly, the family of the surviving girl had been planning to leave the park, but she asked for just one more ride. Her father stood outside the ride with their infant and he SAW that raft tip the mother of his children into the machinery, with his daughter clinging onto the seat for dear life. Absolutely horrifying. He went missing in 2021, and it's been assumed that he took his own life because of the trauma of witnessing the accident, as well as the stress of fighting Ardent for rightful compensation.
If that's true that's pretty selfish, too leave his daughter to live with that trauma for life and now not even have a parent left
@@nicoledoubleyou seriously, eff you - you have no effing clue.
That man quite literally watched helplessly as his wife got ground into mincemeat, fought unsuccessfully for years for compensation from the party responsible, and tried his best to raise his traumatized daughter and her sibling while he was battling what must have been a severe case of PTSD.
Moreover, your comment demonstrates your complete lack of understanding and compassion of what it's like to be suicidal. Depression at its worst will make a person genuinely feel as if he is a burden on others and better off dead. He may well have thought his own demise was the least selfish thing he could do for them!
@@nicoledoubleyou it's not selfish to kill oneself. Saying otherwise only makes people feel more guilty about their feelings and makes things worse for people experiencing suicidal thoughts
@@nicoledoubleyou its selfish to expect a person with severe mental distress to live through life fighting their own brain every moment of their existance without help. don't accuse victims of being selfish because of their own mental turmoil, its a disgusting mindset to have. the daughter deserves so much better, but it it not the fault of the father.
@@iHATEbigots666
He went missing. Don't assume shit.
THE FACT THAT NOT EVEN THE STAFF KNEW WHERE A STOP BUTTON WAS IS INSANE
well the maintenance staff didn't know about it, they didn't say the ride operators didn't know about the stop button.
There were two ride operators on. It was the junior operator's *very first day* on the ride and she'd had just a couple of hours of training that morning. The senior operator was distracted by loading/unloading other rafts, and didn't realize the rafts were on a collision course until about 15 seconds before it happened, and it sounds like he panicked initially and wasn't able to stop the conveyor belt in time.
We don’t know if the workers may have lied about that to save their own ass from getting in trouble.
Usually a STOP button is next to the START button, those staffers are more stupid then a donkey.
Bruh E stops are always the first thing I figure out at a new job can save my life ore others.
"Immediately plead guilty"
Good of them.
"Wanted to build a memorial garden"
At least they are making up for their mistake
"Has yet to fiscally compensate the families"
what
reddit comment
@@IluvBTBAM Y I K E S
Well, a rich man has as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel passing through the eye of the needle.
This is why. Love of money is the root of all evil.
@@windsofmarchjourneyperrytr2823 That makes exactly zero sense. Being successful doesn't mean you're a bad person and it doesn't mean you kove money, although that is the case for many rich people, not all of them are "evil"
Just pointing out, not only are they yet to financially compensate the families, they haven't yet built the memorial garden either. I think they're hoping that if they stall long enough Australians might forget what happened and they can quietly shelve it. In your dreams, Dreamworld execs - not a chance in hell.
The worst part about this story is last year the 12-year-olds father (husband of Kate goodchild) went missing and likely committed suicide because of what happened. Cannot even imagine what she’s going through losing her father after her mom and uncles..
The father could not deal with the loss of his wife at all. According to older articles, the poor girl had to "hold the family together" and help a lot with raising her baby sister. She tried to be brave for her father all those years and still couldn't safe him. This is so incredibly sad.
@@awetistic5295 Oh snap.. just learning of this today. Dave Turner.. I found some articles from June 2021 but nothing since.. they found his car but nothing else.
Here I thought the "worst part" was 4 people being killed so brutally.
@@awetistic5295 So that poor girl had to be instantly turned into the mother for her sister and the head of household. OMG! I hope that poor girl has received intense therapy in order to live a life as close to normal as could be expected under the circumstances. If she doesn't turn to drugs or alcohol then that is one strong woman!
Yeah sure…they all “go missing” or “commit suicide”
It recently became public that the husband of Kate Goodchild and father of the surviving 12 year old girl went missing in July 2021. His car was found at a river crossing outside of Canberra and it is believed he committed suicide by jumping into the river. A search was mounted but called off after nine days. There has been no update since.
jesus christ, that is absolutely haunting to learn. i can't imagine the trauma their daughter must be saddled with.... poor girl.
@@xiv648 Thankfully the media are shutting the fuck up about that kid because the last update we've heard from her was almost exactly two years ago, when the girl was present at the court when Ardent Leisure Ltd copped the massive fine. Them talking about her non-stop would only fuck her up more.
That's so enraging--that the kid not only had to witness the horrific death of her mother, but her father committed suicide afterwards and left her completely alone... I hope she stays strong and doesn't hurt herself.
@tidyheidi9143 If she does end up deciding to put an end to her suffering, it'd be 100% justifiable after all she went through.
The paramedics on scene described some of the victims as having "injuries incompatible with life", and social media users jumped on him for using a phrase like that. Not only is it a medical term, it's probably the nicest way they could have put the extent of injuries of the victims. Disgusting how social media will jump on anyone in the case of a disaster, even those that tried to help.
Cancel culture idiots are a dying breed, thankfully.
Wtf? I don’t even see the issue with that phrase.
he could of said the bodies ended up looking like ground beef with spaghetti tendons. but he didnt. he said it in a much better way.
now tell me, assholes who jumped on his case, which one would you rather him say, disgusting description, or detailed enough description to keep YOU from vomiting.
If my memory serves, the poor paramedic was facing the press less than an hour after attending what was probably one of the most dreadful scenes he'd ever attended, and was responding to a journalist asking what the scene was like and what action he had taken. He was attempting to explain that he had not administered first aid, and the reason why, keeping in mind that he was on air and so he was trying to be sensitive about how he phrased it. I mean, the poor bloke could hardly say "I didn't administer first aid because the bodies were in pieces," could he?
@Unusual Knowledge The message of modern social media is "My ignorance is just as valuable as your knowledge."
The worst part of this is the family were about to leave, but the kids convinced them to go on "one last ride". That was the ride that killed their mother and uncle. Can you imaging living with that for the rest of your life? It breaks my heart.
Its horrendous for those poor kids to have to think that for the rest of their lives. The sad reality is that if they hadnt gone on the ride it would of been someone else that died that day
It’s a fucking nightmare
"One last ride" sounds so sad in this context
It was "one LAST ride"
That is why they usually put water rides last in the park , so if you get wet , you're going home anyway
The Thunder River ride at Six Flags over Georgia in the US malfunctioned when it first opened, too. My best friends brother was one of the park staff working the ride that day. One raft flipped over and the guests were trapped underwater, upside down. He and several other staff dove in and manually released the safety belts, saving the life of every rider. Such a scary day.
I remember when this happened. My mother wouldn't even allow us to go to Six Flags after that.
pretty sure one of the 3 kids died...
Six flags seems to have a lot of stories.
@@mifo2000 I can't remember well but you might be confusing that with what happened at adventure land?
Six flags over texas had a drowning on a ride like this as well raft flipped over I had rode the ride before the accident
Minor things to note; Dreamworld wanted to open the park the *day after*. The Queensland Police Service reminded them that it was an active crime scene, and opening the park would have made their lives a lot more difficult
Furthermore, a number of staff who were first responders to the scene were left understandably traumatised by the incident. Dreamworld (Ardent Leisure) flat out refused their claims for compensation for workplace injury, taking all legal cases through to appeal and dragging their names through the media and playing dirty. Bunch of arseholes.
Those two kids who lived are scarred for life for sure. You're not gonna see four people die like that and walk out the same person.
Especially when you think what the deaths must have looked like for seasoned ambos to need counselling. It must have been horrific
@@distrae And two of the victims were their mothers. Poor little ones.😢
@@mondenkindqueen oh man.... poor kids😔
@@GreenGlo1991 And to think, probably the only reason those kids are alive, is because the adults weight caused the side they were on to tip up instead of down.
I don’t know. Nobody deserved to have that happen to them.
Right no fucking way...
The second he mentioned the giant mechanical conveyor I immediately thought "I know where this is going..."
Well, they only usually go two ways.
Yup... I was thinking oh no, oh no, OH NO.......
Just looking at the picture of the conveyor belt made it obvious these were going to be a ‘meat grinder’ incident.
Fuuuuuuucccc I know right
They should have named the attraction "The meat grinder"
I appreciate that you don't use dramatic music and see it as a respectful way to convey the story of this awful tragedy.
I appreciate the straightforward title and thumbnail too. A lot of channels would be like "These people got on a theme park ride, then THIS happened..."
My brother inlaw needed counciling for years after a similar incident. He was a first responder to a factory accident, but he knew the victim who got dragged into the machinery. I can't even imagine what sort of horror that's like.
That gives me the chills. I hope your brother in law is doing better.
A retired fire captain told me once about a horror that took years to get over, a repair tech at a factory had pulled all the emergency stops on a machine, but it somehow suddenly turned a large fan inside on anyway. Poor guy sliced up.
Said he never found out what the OSHA (US, Missouri) investigation turned up as to how that happened.
There’s a vid about some poor bastard whose own coworkers unwittingly locked him into a Bumblebee Tuna factory pressure cooker he was cleaning, and cooked him alive…
@@seanbrown9048 The Bumblebee death is so sad, and so easily prevented if the company cared
@@scruffy-thejanitor it’s beyond belief, people just having a good time, never expecting such horror…
the phrase “improvements to safety were put off due to budget concerns” is never a phrase that should be said. this incident shows such a chilling disregard for safety.
Greed. Plain and simple greed. That’s what happens when someone who’s never worked an amusement park invests and becomes CEO solely for profit.
Yet, if anything is going to be put off due to budget concerns - it'll always be safety, because safety doesn't sell tickets, and lack of thereof is not visible to guests. And most people greatly underestimate the risks of bad things happening - until they see any kind of accident in person. This is the same mechanism that makes people break the speed limits. They think - 'We're gonna be fine' - and in fact almost always they are right. Almost.
It may sound extreme, but for me this level of disregard for safety measures just to save a few shekels is not manslaughter but murder. Sure, there is no plan to kill a specific person in cold blood but it's definitely as bad to value human life this low and even think about taking the risks of fatal accidents.
I hope the people who where responsible never get a happy moment in their life again with all the suffering they've caused. Not only on the surviving children and the families of the deceased but also on the emergency units and the ride operators who weren't trained and didn't know what was going on before it was too late. They will probably blame themselves even if they didn't knew better.
@@TheGasMaskGuy96 since the video hasn’t mentioned it I assume no one was sentenced to prison and that makes me so bitter. Just imagining that those who are responsible living their lives, going out with friends and laughing makes me so angry. Their greed brought horrific death and tragedy and yet they are free.
In short, capitalism always happens eventually. Even if a company starts out safety focused, eventually someone figures out that cutting just a few corners will increase profits, and when nothing bad happens, they cut a few more, and the process inevitably escalates until tragedy happens.
"I'm scared to ride the roller coaster."
"That's ok, let's try the river ride."
👁️👄👁️
That was exactly what our thinking was when my family visited the Gold Coast in 2016. River Rapids was the only thing I rode because I don't handle thrill very well.
It was...heart-breaking to see what was plastered across TVs in a couple days times in our last day in our hotel room.
@@PKLuver944 i don’t think I could even handle that, going on the ride and this happening a few days later, let alone the poor people on the day that may have witnessed it
@@PKLuver944 Omg that is insane...all jokes aside its pretty heart breaking, im just glad the kids survived.
I used to actually feel this way until I heard about a similar ride like this had the rubber part of the "boat " deflate and eventually flipped over. The people were trapped upside down and eventually downed.
I don't trust any ride now...
Honestly I wonder if there was even a single engineer involved in ride safety AT ALL. As you mentioned, there are dozens of very cheap common sensors that would have prevented this: jam sensors on the belt, water level sensors, auto shuttoffs if a pump fails, obstruction sensors to tell if a boat is in the way... seriously, these are common every-day sensors. any engineer would have implemented these
thats why u let a big company make a ride and not make a diy build. its super sad my condoleances to the family.
But the first step would be, what is the risk? Do we expect the conveyor to flip boats over or just shove them out of the way?
My family owns a car wash and our automatics have sensors in place both to not only prevent damage to vehicles in case of malfunction, but also to prevent damage to the equipment if problems are detected. I can't imagine the risk and the cost of not having automatic shutoffs, even though the risk of someone getting hurt is extremely small. The cost of equipment burning itself up is reason enough even for a greedy company not concerned with safety.
@@SilverMe2004 Doesn't matter. If there is even the *possibility* of the raft flipping onto the conveyor belt, that is a major safety hazard and the belt should be immediately redesigned or have shutoff sensors installed along the track.
@@mike-bk7sq Indeed!! When you know that even Europa-Park, owned by the family that also owns MACK Rides, had it's rapid river built by Intamin.
I love these types of rides cause I always felt like they were the safest. It's so gentle and calm, who could ever expect this kind of accident? This is terrifying.
Same here. I hate roller-coasters but felt safe on the river rides. Well, not anymore.
It’s so shocking, I think this was only a year after the smiler crash in England which is obviously a much scarier big ride but no one died in the incident (even though the way they both happened were kind of similar)
I've always felt the opposite. I avoid water rides/slides because you get thrown around, unlike rollercoasters which are more predictable and sturdier.
You can tell from the wood design that it was more of a custom made not the typical kind you see at every major theme park. The oh we can just do it our sells and save money approach instead of going with the tried and true design that has worked for years.
Much safer doing the real thing, with experienced guides…
Imagine being one of the kids who had to watch their mom die in a brutal fashion right before your eyes on what was supposed to be a special day together. All because some greedy CEO wanted to save money by not investing in safety measures. They should be put in jail.
Tbh it isn't that simple, park employees get pressured to cut corners. This accident can't just be blamed on "greedy CEOs" especially when this park is family owned
No, they should be put through the same "grinder" that those poor parents were that day. Rebuild the ride with their own greed driven profits and suffer the exact same fate. Jail would just be a get out scott free card, especially the camp cupcake they'd end up at being rich as they are.
@@christopherjunkins exactly what I was thinking!
Nick Pastorino Imagine then clinging on while witnessing that. I couldn’t imagine anything scarier 😟
@@Becky149x You could have ten minutes knowing your plane is going to crash (Skynyrd).
I will never forget the day this story broke.
It was massive here in Australia. We thought it was just a horrific accident but the systemic failures were unbelievable and the accident could have been avoided. So weird to know that I went on that ride- it was actually my favorite ride in the park. RIP to those that passed away in the accident
Woah. I posted a comment including something like, I couldn’t count how many times I’ve been on EXACTLY this type of ride, but I cannot imagine having this BEEN YOUR FAVORITE RIDE. That is just crazy. And agreed, this whole incident is an outrage start to finish.
It really was hey.. and its still on going.
@@laurelsilberman5705 I went on this ride so many times and i was in dreamworld A WEEK before this happened and went on this ride. its so scary to think that this happened a week later.
It’s a shame they tore it down. Should have kept it going but asked riders to sign a waiver.
@@madiannc one of the biggest reasons they died that this video failed to mention was that dreamworld had removed one out of every two slats on the conveyor belt meaning that the gaps between the slats were big enough for people to fall through
Imagine the poor ride operator. A 19 year old girl. Who hasnt been shown where the stop button is. And just having to call and wait for help whilst the meat mincing is happening.
She was shown the stop button but not told what events should trigger her use of it and wasn't told to man that post all the time. She wasn't at the button when the raft started to flip so couldn't hit it, which would have resulted in no loss of life.
@@ReturnOfTheJ.D. I saw someone else say that she was told NOT to hit the stop button. I don't know if that's true, but I'd believe it in a heartbeat.
@@ReturnOfTheJ.D. how did the raft star tto flip, was the raft just going to the end of the ride and they were about to get off or did the flip happen in the middle of the ride. Can you describe what happened and how it happened cuz im still confused how a raft caused another to flip
@@frostedcookiedough4343 The raft in front of the one that flipped was stuck due to low water levels because of the malfunctioning water pump in that area. These rafts weight a tonne each, literally. The raft with six people on it (4 of whom later died) was being pushed into it by the conveyor belt, and water was building up underneath that raft. It mounted the other raft, or went over the top of it and then the water pressure from behind it (water being dumped into that area and maybe also the conveyor belt pushing it forward) forced the back of that raft forward such that it became perpendicular or vertical in relation to the other raft, upon which the two children jumped out quickly to their respective sides (saving their lives) and the four adults fell out of the raft. Two were trapped under the raft, suffocating to death as they were unable to move the heavy weight that was now upside down, and the other two adults were chomped and mashed up by the conveyor belt and its machinery, none of which had slats to stop them falling into it. It all depended where you were on the raft as it flipped over. The female who survived (32) took some time to bleed out after being taken out of the conveyor belt machinery, and was alive and conscious, moaning in agony, most of that time, according to witnesses who posted what they saw online.
@@frostedcookiedough4343 They weren't able to get off the ride at the time it flipped without jumping into the water or onto a small section of decking and the two children were closest to those points so they did that.
I live in Queensland Australia, I had been on this ride probably at least a hundred times in my life. What's crazy is this was considered one of the safest and most family-friendly in the entire park. Most other rides in the theme park were considered a lot more dangerous but due to this fact, they probably had better precautions in case of an emergency.
Because this type of ride is usually the safest in a theme park, if done accordingly to all security precautions and with proper emergency blockages. I work in an amusement park and the same thing happened: a water pump broke. The draft got stuck, but the conveying belt stopped, in order to not make the drafts bump into each other. the passengers of the drafts were then safely rescued and the ride shut down to repair
You might know this Rebekah! Did they change the platform at the top of the ride so it no longer rotates in recent years or did it still spin like a carousel with the flow of the water?
The removal of most of the slats on the conveyor belt was a fairy recent change too from memory..
A HUNDRED times??? Jesus how often do you go to Dreamworld?
@@roloug95 Back in high school we'd go on school trips at the end of every term and they'd usually be to a theme park.
I have a massive fear of rides and I live close by as well, this was one of the rides I also thought was safe until the accident, one of the few types of rides I was okay going on as a child-I was always going on a similar one at movie world, and now I’m just so scared of every ride, placing your life in the hands of so many unknown factors just makes me so uneasy
It’s chilling how most of these similar incidents could be prevented if the person in charge actually do their job and not be greedy.
It’s amazing how maybe businesses run this way too. The company I run a flexo press for cuts corners and it blows my mind
Yeah true greedy and negligence
As a australian i can assure you its less about being greedy and more about being lazy
@@MegaCharliehunter No, this is owners and operators being cheap. Everything flows from there.
@@weemadando without seeing the full results of the investigation it is pure speculation. I think the ultimate cause is inadequate risk assessment hence risk not adequately mitigated. Given the fact that there were no criminal charges laid (as far as i know) criminal negligence was not proven. If they had known the risk and not acted they would then be open to criminal charges. Ignorance is no better than negligence... but amusement parks are run by teenagers and other minimum wage employees. Without a sufficient safety management system, which by definition is supported by an adequate risk assessment you're relying on those teenagers to identify and mitigate the risk on your behalf.
The thing that really gets me with this story. Is the fact that the only survivors, were children of the victims. How horrific and traumatic must it be to lose your parents in an accident you survived. I feel sorry for those 2 children and the negligence on that ride is truly horrible.
Yeah that's true but it's better they survived if anyone did. I'm sure the parents would feel nothing but guilt the rest of their lives if the roles were reversed.
I'm wondering if they survived because they were smaller and lighter?
@@arianebolt1575 It's mainly because of their position on the ride -- the children were at the front so they were able to grab on quickly when the ride went vertical, but the adults were at the back and fell backwards immediately
Somehow the fact that it was only children who survived, and probably children with massive guilt for begging to go on the ride at that makes it so much worse. With that much chaos as well, the parents likely died not knowing if their children were safe or not.
@@michalaswindail783 Yes, because it was the "safe" ride you'd mostly go on it if you were a child or with one. Those poor children are definitely not responsible but I don't doubt they'd feel that they are regardless
i think the reason this hit australia so hard is because everyone had been on that ride. the sunny coast is a big place for tourism and at dream world, the river rapids ride is considered to be the ‘safe ride’. i’d been on that ride multiple times as a child and its one of the few rides at the park which parents feel safe letting their children on.
Gold coast
I worked at a park with a similar ride. The loading area (up high) was separate from the unloading area (down below) guests were never allowed to ride up the conveyor belt. We had CCTV and monitors to view all areas of the ride. Emergency stop switches were clearly marked. Ride operators were certified and had on going training. The ride was operated through 3 test cycles with no passengers, before the park opened. No excuse for what happened.
wow. Where's that?
@@bunnymad5049 Silverwood Theme Park in north Idaho
@@noidreculse8906 thanks! xxxxxx
Yeah I was wondering why the dreamworld ride didn't have a separate disembarking platform. Just seems fundamentally unsafe to even risk people being on the conveyor in the first place.
"the conveyor belt at this time was still moving."
That was enough for me.
literally jus paused the video after hearing that part because it’s still sinking in... shit gave me chills.
oh boy oh boy
Yep, that line brought me to tears.
Yeah, I covered my mouth in horror... That shit's horrific as hell.
😬😫
You know the reality of this is that 4 human beings were thrown alive into a meat grinder while their children heard and saw their grizzly deaths and the perpetrators have YET to start paying them compensation. Jezus.
most realistic comment here
Not only, they Didn't Go To Jail!!!!!!
There is no justice when a rich person commits a crime.
@@arhkadian2389 The world won't be truly free until the last king is strangled by the entrails of the last priest.
Substitute "bourgeois cretin" for "king" and the meaning still holds true.
@@RenegadeShepTheSpacer Jesus fucking Christ, chill out, Guevara.
We rode this ride when I was 11. It had flaws in the late nineties. We had to reach out and push the raft in front of us, up onto the conveyor belt. We bumped into the raft in front of us. Instinctively I reached out and started pushing it. Two adults on our raft took over and managed to get the raft going and up onto the belt. We we’re lucky and our lives we’re spared. I remember at the time, feeling scared and a strong, strange feeling washed over me. My older sister wanted to ride it again. I didn’t want to. Mum and dad said no, let’s ride something else. I have always felt awful for the families and the lives lost. May they Rest In Peace! We let the operators know at the end of the ride. They said, the ride was super safe. I said, could we have tipped over, they replied with a laugh and no. At 11, I knew there wasn’t something right with that ride
Thanks for sharing this, I'm now thinking this thing is actually worse than first thought and finding out that ride was as old as it was ...
Makes you think, were they intentionally running it into the ground ? "Just keep it going until something happens" ?
They had no intention of up keeping and updating it ? Once the ride finally breaks we throw it out for good ?
Because that's how it's kinda looking to me, I'm suggesting they didn't even want that ride anymore and had no long term plans for it accident no accident
@@gtt8428 It was the most popular ride in the whole park.
Of course they'll keep running it.
edit: To fill your curiosity, here's a relevant section from the incident investigation pdf(I'd directly link you the whole article but youtube wouldn't like it - but googling with this should give the same result "10545784-final-dreamworld-draft-6-for-upload.pdf")
99. The TRRR opened on 11 December 1986, and at the time of the incident, had
been operating for almost 30 years. During the course of its commission, the
Ride had undergone a number of modifications to various components, although
largely operated as it was intended to when first opened. A number of the major
components of the ride were original, with only slight improvements or
modifications having been made.
That memorial garden actually turned out to be a new roller coaster. No memorial ever built and they still have not payed the settlement. Was all PR BS from them until the story died down
The new roller coaster is pretty sick though
The bodies would have been torn apart, mangled around the gears and such, no wonder the first respondents required counselling after this, one of them even got PTSD and became a recluse
How would you know that? About the emt?
@@christnestrider185 wow.. if he ever reads this then God bless you man... takes courage to do what you do and even more to keep going after something like that..
@@DocLogic123 I mean I super hope he doesn't because that would mean watching a horror video about his trauma
@@eiosti he already knows the story more than anyone.. if anything, he might find someone who's went through the same type of trauma who he can relate to..
@@DocLogic123 sure sure but PTSD means you don't get "used to" the story. Any number of triggers or literally anything at all could send you back to the instance of trauma. It would be unwise for him to be seeking out videos like this one
Australian here. From memory, Dreamworld was closed for more than a month afterwards. What you didn't mention is that the children who survived had to watch their mother and uncle drown. That's something you would never, _ever_ get over.
Did they drown? It sounded from his description like the conveyer dismembered them.
@@jeffreymccarthy7583 I've seen this reported before, some sources say all 4 were killed by the conveyor but some sources say only two were killed by the conveyor and two drowned, my thinking - which is a bit gruesome - is that all four were killed by the conveyor but only two died immediately due to the catastrophic nature of their injuries while the other two effectively survived being pulled down into the mechanism but had otherwise survivable injuries had they not been underwater.
Either way I don't think any child saw their parent drown, they would have seen them get dragged into a mechanism that was dismembering people and that is a bit more traumatising than watching someone drown. 😐
@@krashd in the inquest the coroners determined that they all died from crush injuries with no contribution from drowning, but either way still completely horrific and preventable
@@chickennicker6778 Yeah, I read the coroner's report after watching this video and to be honest it puzzled me. It turns out nobody was dismembered in any way, in fact none of the victims lost so much as a finger - All four died of crush injuries, with the exception of one guy who died from an almost decapitation whilst still being a crush death.
The lack of gruesomeness is not what puzzles me however, it's what killed the two who fell on to the conveyer. The two folks who fell backwards into the "conveyor-meets-raft" system died within 20 seconds, one had his head almost pulled off by the planks of the conveyor while the other had his ribcage crushed by said planks as they passed over his body in the 14 seconds it took for the conveyor to come to a stop.
The two adults who were on the extreme edges of the raft (the two first killed were at the back of the raft, while the two surviving children were at the front of the raft), fell out of the raft and onto the periphery of the conveyor as their raft shook. Both were seen to slip through the gaps in the conveyor (which became an incident in itself) but no mention was made of how they came by their crushing injuries.
Now you have to study the mechanism to picture this next bit in your head but if the two who fell "through" the plank gaps had landed on the chain ratchet system that moved the conveyor the most likely injury would be a lost limb or missing fingers/hands/elbow. There was nothing crushing in there, just cogs and chains that could pull an arm off.
This is what I cannot get my head around.
@@krashd yeah, I mean there's no conspiracy theory since they obviously died, but it would be better to see an expert's diagram as it's hard to picture it.
As an Australian, I remember hearing about this on the news and being sickened by the goriness of the deaths and feeling deeply sickened for days following. This incident has made me think twice about going on any theme park ride at all ever again, because we just can't know for sure that safety procedures are being followed.
well ever since that horrific incident, dreamworld is now much safer and maintained properly and rides tested before hours and after hours.
I always got a really bad feeling about dream world and would refuse to go even when we had the theme passes, I have a really deep fear of rides to the point I don’t even ride roller coasters. When this happened I live very close by and I had to go there shortly after for a school excursion the ride was still closed. I also felt sickened hearing the details of what happened, I felt this sense of dread the entire time I was there, barely anyone was there I guess because it was so recent. I tried to back out because I didn’t feel safe going and I was told I’d fail my class if I didn’t go, it was a physics class where we used the rides torque and shit I don’t really remember, I just remember how uncomfortable I was the entire time and walking passed the closed ride I just felt so bad for everyone involved.
After watching a bunch of your videos and videos by dark history, I have come to the conclusion that human beings don’t really change things until someone dies.
It's a well-known fact that safety regulations are written in blood.
unless it’s Americans and school shootings, then we pretend nothing can be done
so true. there is bit dangerous road in village/town i live, few minor accidents happened, but nothing was changed until my grandpa died in car crash on that road. after that they put speed bumps to slow down drivers and lower the amount of accidents.
@@delusionalmilkshake My condolences on the loss of your grandfather.
Always happens like that, especially in Australia. There used to be an intersection in my small town that was notorious for accidents and near misses, and it was complained about for literally 20 years, council never did anything except fill the occasional pot hole once in a blue moon, all of a sudden a two car crash happens that kills 7 people and they all go “oh shit we need to fix the road” then within a month there is a roundabout built and the council are like “look what we did! We fixed this and made it safer for you!” As if they hadn’t been ignoring requests for 2 decades. I know of so many similar stories. It’s disgusting. Nobody cares until someone dies and even then they still only care about not getting sued.
"It was custom built by the park"
Oh *good* that bodes well...
Yeah, you can ask Schlitterbahn Waterpark (Kansas City) how well that worked out for them, too.
@@greg_216 and son of beast
When parks modifies a construction that has been designed by a professional company such as Intamin, with engineers and architects, no wonder it would cause an accident soon or later.
Annie Sager Son of Beast was built by the Roller Coaster Corporation of America and was fired during construction for their poor construction of the ride but the rest was finished by the park. The Beast was built entirely by the park and that ride has ran without incident. It just comes down to proper safety measurements
Even if it was custom built it wouldn't have been hard to design safety features they were just complacent and didn't care
As an Australian, I should mention something about this ride - it was the most 'mild' of the rides in the park. The only stuff more gentle was the Wiggle's Big Red Car ride. It was the sort of ride you would go on if you had people who were too young/elderly/frail to go on any of the other rides. Part of what was so shocking was that this ride was so gentle, so babyish, that if you asked someone to guess which ride had an accident, nobody would've guessed that it was the River Rapids Ride. And if you asked them to guess how it happened, they would've said that somebody got out of their seat during the ride or something. Nobody would've guessed that it happened on that ride, the way that it did.
i know right..... i am scared of this kind of stuff and roller coasters breaking etc and i would always go on the river rapids because i though it would be the safest even if it did break......
So crazy. Whenever my family wanted a break from the big rides, we did the rapids ride. I can’t believe 2 years old were allowed on this ride !!
The ride being a gentle one probably created the sense of complacency amongst the park staff, fundamentally though any large piece of powerful machinery on a mild ride is as dangerous as one on a very intense ride.
They had the same ride at worlds of fun called fiery of the Nile. Fun ride. Relaxing. Didn’t realize how deadly the thing could be
I'm Australian too and I remember this day like it was yesterday, the Whole country mourned those 4 who lost their lives and we were shocked it could ever happen
I live near Dreamworld and have ridden this ride more times to count over the many years I've gone to Dreamworld. This accident was horrific. I will and have never gone back out of respect for the victims.
I'm never going back out of disrespect to Dreamworld / Ardent Leisure.
I'm just around the corner from it. I also don't intend on going there.
my friend was one of the first responders on-site as she worked there. she wasn't okay for months after. I'll never forget the look in her eyes.
we all grew up on this ride as it's one of the tamer ones. absolutely tragic
Four years later and they haven’t paid up? Disgusting. The victim’s families may have to haul them back to court for non-payment.
The park does not have to pay the victims families, they were fined the 3.6million for failure to comply to WH&S which is paid to the government (or wherever the money goes) it does not go to the family victims involved.
The only ones that can technically sue for compensation are the children that were on the raft. They can sue for psychological damages but other family members cannot. Idk how it is everywhere else but if a family member was not there at the point of incident to witness the tragic accident, then as unfair and terrible as it sounds they are not directly involved with the investigation. Nor are they legally involved with the court. They can speak on behalf of the family and kids, but cannot tell the kids to do anything or sue for compensation themselves.
@@b97p.19 In Queensland, the wrongful death legislation provides that a claim for damages may be brought by the executor or administrator of the deceased’s estate. If there is no executor or administrator, or if no action is brought by the executor or administrator within six months after the death of the deceased, an action may be brought by and in the name of any person for whose benefit such an action could have been commenced.
What's a life worth? Money doesn't being them back
@@johnnybrown7810 Whatever you insure it for.
@@b97p.19 That's why it's so important to establish The Family Trust.
This story sounds like it should have happened in the 70s or 80s. Its terrifying to know it only happened four years ago. While many lessons have been learned, just the thought of how those died is spine chilling. Another well put together and respectful account video.
Agreed. I'm a big thrill seeker, and coaster addict. I'll go skydiving, bungie jumping, ride any coaster, even sketchy rides at the fair. I'll be damned if I'll ever go on a river rapids ride again though. I have submechanophobia so water rides have always freaked me out, but this specific accident was enough for me to swear them off for good.
@@jameswhite6612 what is submechanophobia?
@@MannyJazzcats lmgtfy.app/?q=submechanophobia
Right? I heard IMAX, and I’m like, this is darn recent history.
@Deborah Shaw Computerization and multitudes of redundant systems in modernized parks make rides incredibly safe compared to then. Safer than your own car in many cases. Of course, when a park cuts corners and doesn't allow the proper engineers to build their ride, this happens.
These poor people. I've always been a scardy cat when it comes to rides, and as a kid this here is the single ride my parents convinced me to go on during our trip to the gold coast. When I saw it on the news the irony of it being the only ride my childhood self deemed safe in 4 theme parks hit hard
Yeah, it is a bit weird to think that oftentimes the rides people feel are the most safe are actually the ones that kill people. Rollercoasters for example tend to be extremely safe, but then epcott's rotating puppet show crushed a girl trying to exit to use the bathroom
The worst part of this incident is that the survivors are children who watched their parents and siblings die very traumatic deaths. This by itself is horrible! I cannot imagine growing up having seen that. Its hard enough if your an adult. Those two kids… i hope they each have loved ones that have helped them through this.
So like the Vietnam War?
@@chrisx5127 like any tragedy
Oh this was so horrifying when it happened. I live in Queensland and have ridden the River Rapids ride as a kid, as I am sure many SEQlders have. The fact that they tried to blame the 15 year old girl operating the ride when she hadn't been trained properly was disgusting and appalling. It was a failure in Dreamworld's internal safety systems that allowed this to happen. It was the fault of no one else but the corporation that owns the Theme Park. I feel so sorry for the poor families and especially the children who witnessed their relatives horrendous deaths. Dreamworld was closed for quite a while afterwards and people were not keen on going back initially. I don't know what attendance is like these days. I haven't been there for years.
It’s funny how they blame a 15 year old girl and not the dipshit in charge who made budget cuts. “oh oh that’s hindsight bias we cut the budget so low it couldn’t function so we didn’t MEAN to dismember people even though we did in direct result of our shitty greed so here blame this poor peasant child”
Freaking disgusting
That’s terrible! I honestly feel so bad because that girl probably could have thought it was her fault and probably is traumatized and guilty for not being able to do anything.
"15 year old girl in charge of the ride" excuse me wtf
@@undercoverfbi3155 Not 15, 18 years old actually, but yeah, the point still stands
@@huh7270 My friend worked at dreamworld and knew the girl that operated the ride. The operator was hospitalised several times after the incident due to some quite gruesome suicide attempts, not too sure how she's doing now though. Its disgusting that a large corporation tried to blame it on the operator when they wouldn't install some cheap sensors and actually fix their ride
And to think: Those four people would probably still be alive today if the park had just followed basic safety procedures.
Yeah. It’s so chilling to think that this happened only 4 years ago. The two survivors of the ride are still children today. 14 and 16.
I worked in rides at an amusement park as a teenager. one of our rides was on of these (built by Intamin). The amount of negligence necessary, by all people involved, is mind-boggling.
@@tomthomas8781 it states in the video Intamin didn't build this ride, the park did. I guess they got hold of the blueprints somehow and decided they'd save money by building it themselves, obviously without the safety features.. This company isn't involved in this, the two shouldn't be conflated.
I don't know how quickly it all happened, from the malfunction to the final incident, but to not recognize the issue, and to not know where the emergency shut off is; that's just insane.
@@bazzle_brush You're not allowed to just build someone else's machine, getting those blueprints is called: Industrial Espionage. The moment the park opened, if this was truly the case, Intamin would instantly file a lawsuit.
When I heard that two kids survived I slapped my hand over my mouth so hard, they saw their family members die a horrific death and heard their screams, I am going to cry.
I am the boyfriend of a family member of the victims, it's been incredibly difficult for the family and there's been a few other unrelated deaths that have compounded the legal issues because it means disputed claims to life insurance and belongings
My condolences to the family. So sad and awful.🙏🏻❤️🙏🏻❤️
I was at Dreamworld on holiday the day before this happened. I took my whole family on that ride.
Hearing what happened just 24hrs later still sends chills down my back.
Never could you imagine such a thing could happen. Those poor people, the absolutely gruesome and painful way to die.
Life is so fragile
Ah, I was on that ride at Kentucky Kingdom with my daughter a week before this girl's feet were torn from her body edition.cnn.com/2007/US/06/21/six.flags.accident/ . It is chilling how many close calls we have in life over silly things like 'amusement'. If there is a takeaway from this, it is 'don't trust people foolishly with your children's lives because a corporation says it is safe'. Corporaticans LIE, it is their raison detre.
This isn't theme park related but one year my husband and I were on vacation and found a restaurant we really liked. We had dinner there one night and went back for lunch the next day. Later that day, like a couple of hours later a person walked into that restaurant and started randomly shooting, and there were fatalities. It shook us up to say the least. You just never know....
My mum, auntie and I were there two days before it. Hearing it on the TV in the hotel room we were staying in shook all of us. Still can't believe this happened
I had a similar experience where I went on the smiler at alton towers the day before the crash. Absolutely terrifying how close you get.
The conveyer belt should never have been that dangerous to begin with. It should be a flat solid surface.
Why would you build a body mangler under a freely moving open raft?
There was a section of the conveyor accessible to passengers while boarding, that was covered and completely flat. The conveyor at the end of the ride where this happened is, under normal operation, submerged in water. Had that been full there wouldn't have been the resistance to snag the raft in the first place. I get your overall point, but had management/staff properly operated the ride, it would be very unlikely to tip a raft in that section. Some of the rafts with larger passengers did tip to pretty steep angles during the white water rapid section though, so I wouldn't be surprised if a few rafts tipped there over the years. When I heard this on the news I assumed it tipped in the rapids section until I read otherwise some time later
@@JordyValentine But that's exactly clara :v's point. Coulda, shoulda, woulda but....they didn't. There needs to be redundancy in place for every possible safety measure because you can't rely on people to do it. In a perfect world your point is valid, but this world is far from perfect.
@@Floridafanatic28 Covering it in water doesn't address the danger. A person ending up outside the raft is an obvious safety issue that should have been addressed along the entire route of the ride. This shouldn't be some weird edge-case that no one would think of. Rafts getting stuck is another seemingly obvious safety issue that should have been considered.
@@Floridafanatic28 my point, as someone who has ridden this very ride many times before it was removed, is that had the ride been operated properly, the conveyor would not have been the dangerous part of the ride. I don't disagree that the ride could have been designed better
The conveyer was actually modified. When the ride originally opened it operated with all the wooden slats and was a flat surface but for some reason a few years prior to the accident they removed 60% of the wooden slats creating the large gaps
Probably one of the most graphic disasters I've seen covered on this channel and the park couldn't have been bothered to even add a plaque.
Did you actually watch the video?
They're creating a park to commemorate the lost lives.
@@tim3172the didn't they made another ride
@@jackburns114 They did both. There's the new ride, Steel Taipan, but also a memorial garden that overlooks the river with four benches, flower gardens, and a carving in the center garden.
Who wants to go to a theme park designed around fun and be reminded by death and unsafe practices? Having a plaque is stupid
@@BigDavoNorriwongIt’s not stupid. The very least they could do is commemorate the lives of their victims.
I've been on hundreds of amusement park rides and I'm starting to wonder just exactly how lucky I've been. I get that these accidents are rare but that's only because of the unfortunate deaths like these that led to better safety measures. Terrifying.
yup. especially with so many people in this world that don’t seem to think very critically at all. i will definitely be avoiding certain rides, local carnivals are more enjoyable and less people anyway. for me amusement parks is more about the food, snacks, and cool stuff u can get.
I never go on amusement park ride. I have beedon some when i was younger, but that was so many years ago. They are so dangerous. I don't see the point in them as you are getting notiing out of it. I hate flying. It fills me with fear when i am on a plane and can't wait to get off. I always feel lucky to be alive, but the differnce is there is something at the end of it. It takes you to a beautiful place
I was thinking the same.
I used to be very scared of going on rides for fear that they’ll malfunction. I dunno if the pandemic really knocked life out of me but I don’t care about dying anymore and honestly if the universe thinks it’s my time to go, there’s nothing I can do anyway. Might as well ride that ride.
@@yea0000 you’re way more likely to die in a car accident on the way to the park than to die on a ride. It’s similar to plane crashes, when they do happen they are very horrific and tragic, make big news. But you have a 1 in 107 chance of dying in a car crash throughout your life, almost a percent. The odds of dying on a rollercoaster is 1 in 300 million, per ride. You would need to ride a roller coaster 3 million times to get the same chance of dying as driving a car for most of your life, if that makes you feel better! :)
"Improvements to safety features were deferred because of budgetary concerns."
If you operate a massively popular amusement park, you NEED proper safety equipment, even if you don't have enough money. ZERO excuses.
If you operate an amusement park you need proper safety equipment PERIOD
@@rheajoy5558 YES THAT'S EVEN BETTER
@DanNiDae Insurance covered most of the fallout. You can budget for insurance but apparently not for maintenance.
There's a saying..."If you think safety is expensive, try an accident.
Don't tell that the amusement parks in the 1980s.. those were dangerous af
I feel so bad for anyone who worked this ride on that day. Probably some teenager who never would expect that. Plus the children of the family. So sad.
I remember that in court the dreamworlds lawyer tried to point the finger at the teenager operating the ride when it was literally her first day operating such a thing and she had no training for it
Yes - one of the two operators had literally never worked on that ride before and had just had basic training that morning, and hadn't been told where everything was. IIRC when she noticed something was wrong with the water level she tried to stop the ride but wasn't familiar enough with the controls to get the conveyor belt shut down in time.
The pump failure had also happened several previous times because of a recurring electrical problem, that the park was struggling to troubleshoot because their record-keeping was so bad and the maintenance people had a hard time figuring out how their homebrew ride even worked.
Did the teenager get in trouble??? I hope not :(
@@Booyougirl If anything I hope she got therapy. I couldn't imagine being in charge of a ride during such an awful event.
I hate the fact that there are probably tons of people who saw this on the news and blamed it on the teen without considering the fact that it can very easily be the employer's fault
I'm 2 minutes in and he says "this ride, however, was custom built by the park itself"
Oh no. Here we go again.
Such a massive tragedy. I remember this well.
The victims were torn apart by the conveyer belt gears, decapitated, disemboweled, one word, carnage.
The medic that was first on scene was interviewed shortly after arriving and said the now infamous “injuries not compatible with life “. He was smashed online but as he wasn’t a Dr, he couldn’t say they were all four dead.
I often wonder if any witnesses or family committed suicide, they are forever scared.
The victims were torn apart by the conveyer belt gears, decapitated, disemboweled, one word, carnage. How could you know this???
The news in Australia reported on the injuries that killed the victims, and they were mentioned at least in brief even during reports of the investigations.
To the OP- it's suspected the father of the girl who survived died by suicide as he went missing last year.
@@helpstopanimalabuse8153 It's in the coroner's report.
The coroners report only uses medical names for the injuries, but you can infer that the injuries where bad. They state abrasions, lacerations, compression injures, crushing injures, and fractures to ribs and other bones. So definetly carnage
@@helpstopanimalabuse8153 Common sense when reading the coroner's report.
I've been doing some research on this case, after seeing some people on another short video about this event say that this ride had functioned without incident for thirty years. And, well....it didn't. There hadn't been a safety assessment done by a qualified engineer since it opened in 1986, and many ad hoc modifications were never passed on to the regulator. One such modifications was a removal of some wooden slats on a conveyor belt at the end of the ride, which created dangerously large gaps under which was machinery. sound familiar?? "The coroner said managers at dreamworld had ignored pervious incidents where there had been problems on the ride and not done anything to fix underlying causes. There had been serious incidents where rafts had also flipped in 2001, 2004, 2005, 2008, and 2014, but no action was taken to fix the fundamental problem." A safety manager even said it was only a matter of time before a fatal accident happened. There were individuals from the board down issuing safety concerns and no one listened. It's just sickening really. They should have lost every dime and that whole place should have been shut down. The park owners claimed they would be bulldozing the ride and replacing it with a memorial that the family would help design. And instead? They announced in late 2018 that they were building a rollercoaster that would tie into another ride right next to it. And no mention of a "memorial" has been made since. Lastly, there hasn't been much talk of how horrendous the deaths of these four people were, but the coroner said that there were external and internal injuries, meaning the ride dug deeply into their flesh. Other comments I've seen said that because of the slats being removed, the people fell through the gaps, and were pulled into or on top of the machines, which acted like a mincer. It took so long to remove their bodies because of how hard it was to pull their bodies back out of the machinery. They were so badly disfigured that the emt’s and other people who took part in the body retrieval, had to have therapy to deal with the trauma. And no jail time? Only charged 3 million?? No memorial??? Utterly reprehensible. They literally got away with murder.
www.afr.com/companies/tourism/dreamworld-tragedy-an-accident-waiting-to-happen-20200225-p5441k
Yep i agree..so sad shoukd never have happened
I read that report a couple of months back and had nightmares for a week afterwards. Absolutely disgusting misconduct. Cannot believe this happened in our country.
It's appalling that safety inspections are done, problems are pointed out and then nobody come back to check if they had been fixed.
Happened in the office I used to work at too, owner hid the fire extinguishers because they were unsightly, inspector put them in proper place and the next day they had disappeared again.
Health check for the employees, phones needed replacement because not ergonomic and causing neck issues, nothing got replaced. We employees called back the heath inspector and they said they can't force to change anything and can only point out problems. It was a low risk job but knowing this could happen everywhere is terrifying
not to mention they were fined 3.6 million but the families received no compensation?!? Pray tell where in the FUCK did that 3.6 million go? Utterly fucking infuriating.
Over in the great US, we have incidents like the Verrückt water slide accident. At least there it seems like a couple owners were charged with involuntary manslaughter.
When my family and I went to Dreamworld some time before the fatal accident, I noticed that the water level at the top of the conveyor belt was extremely low.
Our boat bumped hard into the boat in front and slightly lifted.
I believe that Dreamworld were aware of this issue with the pumps way before the accident but chose to ignore it.
It was completely preventable.
That's pretty scary...glad you're ok
If you operate an amusement park, you CANNOT cut corners when it comes to the safety of your guests. No excuses.
@@rustinstardust2094 we were thankfully fine. I was a bit concerned at the time but never imagined an accident like this could happen, but after what happened to us, i can see just how the accident happened (boats all piled up at the top, low water level and nowhere for your own raft to go) I'm still saddened and horrified about what happened to the other family. What a terrible way to die :(
@Thora Friganza I agree. I went on with my husband and small children. It could have easily been us or any other family. The family that it happened to, I could not believe it at first as I thought the worse that could happen was rafts bumping hard into each other and slightly lifting. Never something this horrific. I can't believe that Dreamworld didn't get this issue of low water/pump problems rectified as safety for guests comes first.
The children will never again properly Convey intimate feelings due to their loss. The
I was on this ride the day before, I remember watching it on the news and being in complete shock. RIP to those who lost their lives that day ❤
Its scary how familiar this is to me. I remember waiting in those queues, sitting down in the ride and placing on the big strap. I remember laughing when my friends/family got splashed with huge bouts of water and covering my ears in the more cinematic sections resembling the gold rush with their loud dynamite noises... This just hits different compared to all the other ride disasters, being able to visualise what the riders saw before their fate on that conveyor belt. To think such joy can become such pain and suffering in such a short time...
I remember being there only 1 year before this accident. My partner and our daughter and her special needs sister were on the ride and one of the rafts got stuck on the same part, forcing our raft to push up and almost flipped several times til I yelled out to them to fix it. A staff member then used a pole to push the stuck raft. It saddens me that it was a KNOWN issue and was obviously ignored. So sad.
Omg that’s so scary. I last went on the ride in April 2016, and had a blast. However my mums made a weird comment saying she felt like she’d never ride that again and had a bad feeling that something really bad could happen, especially as 2 year olds are allowed on the ride, and from experience, my little brother jumped around a lot. !
The water pump needed to be replaced for many weeks...it was a mantinance problem not the ride itself.
2/3 of the slats were removed from the conveyor belt. This allowed their bodies to go in between the gaps and they basically got mashed to bits.
@@Heavens-Humanaterian-Army Rafts getting stuck had been happening since 2001. The ride itself was unsafe.
Holy shit, that’s terrifying!
These really aren't the cheesy things you'd expect. They're just well done pieces of history.
Did someone say cheese?
Hi im the knives from 007
They're the kinds of stories that're horrifying because A.) They actually happened, and B.) You mentally put yourself in the victims shoes and try to think of any way YOU could've survibed had you been the victim instead, only to realize that there's probably no way you could've.
That seems to be the common thread for the stories presented on this channel, and I love it.
That's why I like this channel. It doesn't sensationalize the deaths or the possible gory details. It's more 'this is a terrible thing that happened and, more importantly, this is why it happened, and, in many cases, this is what's been done to keep it from happening again.' So far, I can't think of a time it's been disrespectful to the victims of the tragedies it's covered. I hope that doesn't change.
I don't get it. You think stories about people getting maimed and killed are "cheesy? What if it was one of your loved ones? 🤔
This one made my stomach turn. If the EMTs needed therapy God knows what trauma the children are living with now. Great vid.
I remember this ride, rode it plenty of times. Initially I found it really fun. But as I got older, and the more times I concluded the ride on that conveyor, the more uneasy I felt. Eventually I got such a bad feeling, I refused to even ride it. Last I rode was a month before this tragedy.
Gut feelings can sometimes pay off.
Always trust your gut!!
“Out of respect to the dead and to allow an investigation” I get the feeling the closure had a lot more to do with the latter than the former.
Dreamworld actually wanted to open the park the day after the accident for some kind of "day of remembrance". Those plans were VERY quickly shut down. I only remember that detail since like many Australians, this story was so shocking and heartbreaking and I was checking the news every day for updates.
Yeah, they wanted to do a day of rememberance service on the 29th, but they needed to investigate the d---s.
After they were told that they could not open, they decided, "why not honor the dead then."
If the PARAMEDICS needed counseling, then I can only imagine just how badly mangled the bodies were. Dear lord....😧
Those poor kids, having to live with such a damning memory.😞
When the raft flipped the conveyer which was made of long wooden slats continued to move. Those caught underneath the raft were effectively ‘grated’ from head to waist. It was absolutely horrific for those who had to tend to the scene 😞
I know one was decapitated.
@@EnthetaSkater how anyone thought the lack of maintenance was ok.. and wouldn't end in disaster. .. .... ...... I'll never understand.
@@We_Are_All_Vultures Money it is the main cause of all deaths as they will cut any corners they can to save money
@@ThatRandomChannelTRC are you serious? Mangled means torn apart. Bodies can and do get torn apart. What does biology have to do with your ridiculous comment?
You know some shits gonna go bad when you hear “conveyor belt” in a horror documentary
I remember when this happened, those kids went from a fun day at the park to being orphans. It’s crazy thinking that my family has been on that ride a few years before hand
As an Australian, I was hoping you would do this one. Dreamworld’s conduct towards its employees and its cold hearted attitude towards the victims families and survivors was atrocious. They blamed employees and fought closing down the park. It’s all about money and I doubt they have learnt anything.
I grew up down the road from Dreamworld, and I cannot tell you how much this tragedy rocked the community. People were absolutely horrified, and Dreamworld has (rightfully) struggled ever since. Nobody trusts them anymore. I’ve been riding the Thunder River Rapids since....god, about eight years old? Until I graduated high school - I must have ridden it a couple of hundred times. It’s so chilling to think that this could have happened to anyone at any time - the ride was an accident waiting to happen.
My heart goes out to the kids who were on board/on the platform and had to watch their parents get dismembered...I can’t imagine how they will ever get over it. I also feel for the first responders and (way too young) ride operators who were exposed to this. Talk about nightmare fuel.
I grew up on the GC too and though I hardly went to dreamworld, when I did this was my absolute favourite ride. I remember how horrible it was to hear the news that afternoon, just how shocking that somewhere so beloved could be the scene of something so horrific. I hadn’t been for years at that point, but honestly don’t think I could ever visit the park again knowing their lack of care for safety was to blame.
@@stag5783 None of them care. Disney had some horrific accidents. They dumped a woman's stuff when she vanished off their ship.
They didn't bother to even call her parents after she was gone several days and they knew...
Great America got out of paying for 8 teens that burned to death in a haunted castle...
I went on this ride 4 weeks before this happened. The fact that this could have happened to anyone including myself before the tragedy still sends chills down my spine.
3 weeks beforehand I went on this ride I remember it was closed for half the day citing water level issues, so it very well could have malfunctioned the day I was riding it's a scary thought.
It's 2023....and it doesn't feel like it was that long ago. Absolutely horrific incident...people were literally ripped apart alive. I used to live 500mtrs away and have been there to that park a few times....it just has a creepy sinister feel to it now and so many people just don't go to the park anymore partly because of this incident.
When I heard that they custom-designed the ride themselves all the warning bells started ringing.
Just to clarify something... are we talking designed as in drawing what they wanted it to look like, or designed as in actually building it?
Intamin are common to have custom design in their lineup of ride.
Like Top Thrill Dragster/Kingda Ka and Chinese Dueling Dragon is pretty much custom design roller-coaster from Intamin
Even Hagrid Motorbike is the only one of kind. Family coaster with 7 Launches, on-ride switched track, dropped track, and custom train
It worked fine for many years but the big problem came when they modified the original conveyer belt design after some major maintenance when it was around 20 years old. Intamin straight up told them it's not Intamin's fault after seeing the modifications. The unmodified Intamin design has no such problems.
Usually I hear these terrifying tragedies in the 70s and 80s, knowing how recent this is just gives me chills. And it happened of ignorance. It’s so upsetting and chilling
IKR, with all of the safety procedures and laws, and what we've learned from the past, this still happens. Greed though. It always come back to greed.
I mean the second he said they did it themselves i knew cut corners where gonna be the issue. Theres not a lot of home grown, homebuilt complicated rides that end well. Should have bit the bullet and hired the professionals.
These accidents still happen across the world unfortunately. There’s a reason that risk is in the fine print of the tickets
Budget cuts are lethal cuts, It's true
I live in QLD and have been to dreamworld about 6 times before this incident. About 4/6 of those times the ride was closed for "maintenance"- so the fact the staff didnt know where the emergency button was OR that they hadn't looked into the safety and mechanics of this ride despite the fact it was always closed- absolutely horrifies me.
I went on this ride a bunch of times growing up on the coast. The scariest part about the ride was the end where you really did wonder if this was safe. I couldn’t imagine slamming into another raft at that speed there is no escape. Incredible those children survived.
As an Aussie, going on this ride was part of my childhood, as it was for many tens of thousands of other Australians. It was so surreal when this happened.
It really was. I will never go to this place ever again. Even driving past is weird and makes me feel so uneasy.
Agreed, just kept on thinking “Wow, this could’ve been me” such a staple of my childhood
fr. i was there a week before this happened. everytime we would go to dreamworld we would go on this ride. so sad
Yep, my favourite ride in the park. Kinda sad to see it gone, but I get why they can't just fix it and reopen like so many others
We had something similar to this in England at Alton towers, I never went on the smiler ride but have been Alton towers couple times in my childhood and went on most rides, but looking at how unsafe some of rides are now as a adult does give you some kind of perspective on how fortunate you were as a child to not experience a tragedy like this, wether that meant you were a part of the accident or you witnessed it before your eyes
"The victims sustained injuries that were incompatible with life." I'll never forget that quote from one of the responders when this happened. Such a gruesome understatement.
Yeah that is EMT talk for "turned into minced meat".
@@Shawaeon Or Chunky Salsa.
Thats the one quote I'll never forget.
Somehow that quote is more terrifying than any graphic description could have been.
People got pissed off at him for saying that. How fucking stupid. What did they want him to say? Did they want him to get into detail?
This used to be my favourite ride when I was a kid. Every time we visited Dreamworld I went on it over and over again. Really scary to think about what can happen when you're having fun and least expecting it.
Absolutely awful. Those poor kids. 😔
As a former EMT I can only imagine the stress and trauma from that emergency response call.
eesh
Was really sad and shocking when this happened. It affected all of us in Australia. You explained what happened very well 🙏🏻
Lots of Australians had been on the ride. It's almost a rite of passage to holiday in Queensland and go to the theme parks when you're a kid
I'm not sure if this is true but I think DreamWorld gave the victims lifetime passes to DreamWorld because of the incident
Yeah, we only really have one big location for huge modern theme parks in Australia and it's the Gold Coast (old style parks in Sydney and Melbourne called Luna Park and some smaller water parks). It was really shocking to think something like this could happen in Australia.
I've been on those rapids.. pretty much every Australian has.. that's the scary thing.
@@bgrossman exactly
I'm glad the children survived.
But what a shame the park had money to make all the necessary upgrades to open it a year after the accident. And money to start the memorial garden. But not enough to help the families? The two surviving children in the LEAST need counseling.
Those kids are definitely going to have PTSD, especially if the paramedics needed counseling after retrieving the bodies.
@@manifestationsofasort They may not. It depends on the kid and their level of resiliency. I know that sounds bizarre, but there’s research on this. Two people can experience the same, life-altering trauma, and yet they react to it differently. Giving children who’ve experienced acute trauma counseling does reduce the risk of them developing PTSD, so they should absolutely be seen by someone after an event like this.
Children have a biological instinct to cling onto things and if dosed with enough adrenaline they could be able to support their own weight like a primate's youth would be able to. I think the unofficial explanation for how they managed to survive is related to the stories of parents lifting cars off their trapped child etc.
What? According to this video they demolished the ride. And it's not as though they're trying to get away without paying a dime to the families, they're likely trying to mitigate the expense. You can of course debate the ethics here, trying to whittle down a compensatory payment, but you can bet the park intends to pay something substantial. They're probably just trying to negotiate something with the plaintiffs, and the plaintiffs view the memorial garden as an attempt to garner enough sympathy to lower their settlement demands.
@@rafetizer Not the best optics, though. Sometimes ideas look better on paper.
these types of deaths always disturb me most. the fact that that was such a horrendous way for those four people to die, the two children heard it happen and most likely had to helplessly watch it happen, that those two children have to live with this for the rest of their lives and i don’t doubt they blame themselves for it, the paramedics needing counseling after, the list goes on. man this story really gets me. so sad.
This was my favourite "tame" ride at dreamworld. The mind boggles to think something this horrendous happened on this ride instead of the more extreme rides in the park
For the first 16 years of my life, I visited Dreamworld annually. This was the ride we went on last every single time. It was my favourite way to end the day. When the news broke of this tragedy I was heartbroken. I had been on this ride a few months prior. I can’t imagine the pain and heartbreak the families experienced. It’s truly disgusting that Dreamworld used no basic safety measures on such an important ride.
Watch some videos on Action Park in NJ. Same issues there.
But they plead guilty and didn't contest the charges. Most companies won't do that.
Yes. It was a staple ride and a good one to ride last (as you could get soaked). A tragic event and no amount of money can fix the "disgusting" practises. Especially a ride that old. The payout was a pittance and should have been much greater. Most theme parks usually don't want a memorial remembrance (reminding people of a tragedy) in their park but I would say for PR purposes they will have decided to go that route. No surprise the families are upset and want nothing to do with it. Traumatic is an understatement.
@@fredtaylor9792 plead guilty because it's about saving face and surviving. If they tried to contest it the public would have turned against them. It's always about the $. They take a small revenue loss and get to move on another day. Contesting it they would have lost anyway and then possibly faced harsher fines and criticism.
@@1punch_man Not necessarily true at all. You'd think you'd be right but most companies do contest it. The public tends to have a short memory, especially when it comes to their enjoyment. Here in the states anyways, it seems very common for the company to fight in court.
The way those 4 people is enough to give me nightmares. I can’t begin to imagine what it was like to witness the accident and to recover the dead bodies.
N
Thuci
I don't mean to be gruesome but there were no bodies, just body parts.
EDIT: It turns out the victims only had crush injuries and nothing more.
@@krashd I don’t think you are gruesome. I agree with what you said.
@@krashd Actually from what I recall, none of the bodies were actually dismembered. Just... ugh... really mashed up.
I went on this ride back in 2012. It really was one of the most tamest rides in the park. You wouldn't expect it to cause such traumatic deaths.
I’ve been to Dreamworld a few times in my life and ridden this very ride. In 2016 I took my kids to the Gold Coast and visited the other three theme parks but ran out of time to do Dreamworld. When this first happened I couldn’t help but think that could have been my whole family gone. Absolutely tragic for those involved.
Wait a minute, the ride was in a state of disrepair, meaning they put no money into it recent history wise, and now this happened they can conveniently remove it and avoid all the associated costs of upkeep ?
Let's go deeper, how much of that 3 million they had to pay out would they still have if the accident didn't happen because they paid to upkeep the ride ?
I'm thinking they come out ahead in all of this, very, very sleazy,
From the perspective of a maintenance technician, here are three solutions that would have completely prevented this absolute travesty from happening.
1.A simple trip switch at the end of the conveyor that hit the bottom of the boats and stopped the conveyor if it didn’t detect a boat after a set amount of time.
2. An interlock system which prevented the conveyor from starting unless both pumps were detected to be active first.
3. The most rudimentary. A $15 float switch that would kill the conveyor if the water dropped below a set point.
As someone who works in the industry, this horror was absolutely on the maintenance department. I would have red tagged not allowed guests on it at all until this was addressed, the big wigs bitching about lost profits be damned.
And perhaps a belt conveyer.
As a maintenance tech, I'm truly astonished they didn't have a float switch at the very least. Entirely preventable. I've worked for places that are really cheap but this is just sad.
as a person with no knowledge of this stuff. I’m confused why they even continued to keep the ride open if there wasn’t enough water. kids do dumb things like maybe trying to reach down and touch the conveyer belt thing that the circle things with seats ride on. they are so greedy. and borderline murderers for being so knowingly irresponsible.
No passengers on the conver belt!!!
4. A button to release your seat restraint in an emergency so you can (hopefully) jump free. Once those hydraulic restraints come down over your head you are trapped.
Thank you for reporting this incident without sensationalising it. Many UA-cam channels would neglect to mention that theme park rides are normally extremely safe, so thank you for putting that bit in. It is because of how safe the industry is that when an accident occurs, all efforts must be taken to ensure it can never happen again.
I also watch GP to Enthusiast. He’s also very respectful to those who are injured or die. And very good at explaining how the rides fail or close down.
@@weltonvillegal6258 GP to Enthusiast is awesome
@@weltonvillegal6258 another vote for GO to Enthusiast. I was initially put off by his seemingly-elitist sounding name. But glad I persisted because his knowledge is top notch and his explanations are very intellectually satisfying.
@@weltonvillegal6258 well cultured
Action Park: Am I a joke to you.
Being someone that was on this ride a couple days before round about a week, & has grew up on this ride, myself & my family were shocked with how low the water level was as we were coming up the conveyor belt, & were concerned on why there were so many tubes awaiting at the top. We over heard they were going todo checks either then or later on. as locals who loved that ride this was devastating to hear about & still to this day daunting to hear !
This moment shook the country to its core. Thank you for giving this story so much respect. I remember seeing this story all over the news for days, it was so horrifying that I would tune out every time it came on. This is the first time I really knew all the details of what happened that day. Thank you.
This 10 minute video did more for my understanding of what actually happened than 4 years worth of news coverage
You can read the full 279 page report from the Qld Courts here: www.courts.qld.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/641830/10545784-final-dreamworld-draft-6-for-upload.pdf
Happy reading. Its a good. And you can understand why the news cant report on everything that was brought up. There is a lot.
The "news" goes for the quick shock and awe instead of well, reporting the news.
I really appreciate how you make clear that as long as basic safety procedures are followed, these rides are perfectly safe. A lot of channels that cover topics like this seem like they're trying to make all rides look dangerous just to scare people, and that isn't remotely accurate. So props to you for being responsible.
All machinery is dangerous when not used correctly.
There's always a danger when safety practices are not followed, and you never know what ride at what park will be the next to cause a negligent death.
My fear is that I'll be the unlucky one or some shit. I trust that the rides are safe, it's the operators I don't always trust.
Thank you for covering this in the way you did. I went to the comments before continuing past 2 minutes in because these kind of videos can be terrifying and gruesome and I am glad it was not detailed more then it was, as if to dramatize it. Helps me avoid explicit visuals mentally and covers it more respectfully so I can still learn the information of the case and possibly learn something from it. Will certainly look into more of your videos in the future.
Your research and reporting are impeccable! Glad to hear your stories.