@@zepplin810Yep, learned about that right before going to it last year and I went on the monster and it felt like I was gonna fall out cause of how loose the lap restraints were
you should look into the ppb or pbb poisoning in Michigan, it was in the 70s I believe, I found out about it not too long ago and thought it was interesting
The ride was built with multiple automated safety features as standard and there's evidence of this. When the ride became unsafe and kept tripping these safety cut-offs, the park owner removed them. This wasn't negligence, this was blatant disregard for the customer's safety. And what was the council doing to inspect the ride that was clearly breaking every rule in the book.
Those who died fell into the moving conveyor and its machinery. They were said to have received “injuries incompatible with life”, which is a polite way of saying “mangled”. Apparently some of the responders needed counselling, such was the state of the bodies.
I remember seeing something about this. And the medic on scene who used that phrase, when interviewed, received a lot of flak for it. But there was no bad intent on his part. Just a medical term. He wound up applying for disability and a desk job because he was so traumatized but the authorities refused.
@@davidcox3076iirc, the term is formally defined to cover injuries such that paramedics are not expected to attempt resuscitation ( because it would be impossible).
I am a local and have heard from a cop that spoke to the investigators that saw the aftermath, "mangled" is an understatement. More like _dismembered... mutilated._
ok, I was wondering how these people died as I either didn't understand what the narrator said or I felt like he skipped over it and just said 4 people died without explaining how......anyway, that makes total sense now; however, curiously, I guess these floating boat things didn't have any seat belt type like restraints and this is why people got thrown out of them to their deaths, or did they undo them mistakenly out of panic to try and get out of the craft? If they didn't have any restraints I suppose I could understand this as if it were to capsized the idea would be that the rider could keep themselves from drowning by escaping from underneath of it. but again, perhaps not have restraints would be a safety violation....anyway, this is sad to see and that at the minimum the operators should have been informed of where the shut down button or switch was......and how terrible to be going to an amusement park for fun and having this happen to you........I hope the families were able to sue this company as I recall hearing that at the least the government fined them for their lack of proper safety protocols......
They didnt just die, they were torn apart and trapped in the gears and pulleys of the conveyer belt. The emergency service workers who attended had to get counselling afterwards it was so bad. I wonder how the two kids who survived the accident are now, and hope they have recovered as best as they can.
Imo the biggest factor in the disaster was the removal of the slats off the conveyor. They essentially created a human mincer. Had they left the slats on nobody would have been able to fall through into the machinery and I doubt there'd be any fatalities. How this wasn't considered a major hazard at the time of the modification is insane
I knew when he mentioned than the slats and their spacing were for safety that they'd play a role in the disaster. In general most rides which are designed by companies specializing in them are safe. Altering their design without consulting them is clearly negligent and overtly stupid. On changing anything anywhere, go ahead and do it if you're smarter than the engineers who designed it. Otherwise maybe best to leave it alone.
And going back further… if they had actually installed more powerful machinery up front; the dangerous sequence of ‘Mickey Mouse’ modifications would have never started
Yes sure that's an issue, but the conveyor was still moving so just because the slats aren't there doesn't mean that disaster would have been averted because they would have still been pushed underneath the tipped over raft. The real issue was poor maintenance records and undertrained staff
The coroners report (available free online) is both an interesting and upsetting read. Possibly the most horrifying part, to me, was that investigators spent hours trying to replicate the accident, but couldn't actually do it. Even with all of the glaring issues and obvious neglect, the ride was still *relatively* unlikely to kill anyone. Everything just aligned perfectly that day, every bit of bad design, bad maintenance, bad operator training and procedures, and sheer bad luck. And so four people died. Makes you think about how many incidents never happen. How many times people come far closer to being mangled than they'll ever know, but one domino in the cascade is just slightly out of line, so they walk away and carry on with their lives, and the deathtrap lies there in wait for the next time.
The thing all engineers should do when designing stuff like this is remember a 0.000001% chance of something happening isn't good enough it's needs to be impossible
@montyshark3993 well that's impossible, nothing can be entirely prevented, just mitigated to reasonable risk. Additionally, it often stated that no one thing can create a catastrophe, but a series of generally small mistakes or problems that get compounded. In which case engineering to make things immune to risk is beyond reasonable.
This is the part that chills me. I grew up 10 minutes down the highway from dreamworld and me and my friends just always had annual passes because they were dirt cheap for local residents. We'd been on that ride legitimately hundreds of times and as stupid teenagers done shit like try to run the boat into the walls or stick our hands in the water to spray each other. I was on the ride less than a week before that awful day, and I'll never forget the mood at school in the days following. Everyone was completely devastated that people died in such a horrible way and sickened thinking about how random circumstances and sheer luck meant the tragedy happened to someone else and not them. What gets me is exactly what you said, how most tragedies are never caused by one thing and are almost always just a random series of misfortunes that are completely impossible to predict. So many of my friends, and myself, never went back on any of the rides because the anxiety just wasn't worth it.
I actually studied & worked at Dreamworld's Training Cafe around the time the incident happened. I was supposed to work the very day it happened, but I fell sick beforehand. My fellow students & co-workers had the day off to ride the rides, including the River Rapids, just a couple of weeks before the incident. Let me tell you, the thing was barely chugging along. The animatronics were missing limbs & skin & rarely moved. I talked about it with a security guard who had worked at the park for decades & he said that the ride was poorly designed from the get-go. Apparently, there wasn't an easy way for tradies to enter & repair any faults, among other issues. We agreed that it should've been demolished & replaced years ago, lo & behold, a couple weeks later & the incident happened.
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Even though greediness and/or poor oversight by management is overwhelmingly found to be the primary concern in the majority of these cases, I can't begin to understand why incidents like these have happened and continue to happen again and again. Its heartbreaking to believe that human lives aren't worth anything more then the cost of a quick fix, let alone the cost of properly and permanently repaired attractions. Ouch!! I hope you've been able to heal and grow since you experienced this and that you never have to be any part of a any disaster ever again. Thanks again and be well.
The ride wasn’t built by a reputable company like Intamin, the abandoned theme park Australia’s Wonderland did have an Intamin river rapids ride but Dreamland decided to backward engineer a ride based on the one in Sydney instead using a local construction company, therefore it was never a proper designed ride just Australian ingenuity, and they got it wrong
Two days before this happened, I rode this ride with my kids and my Mum. It used to be our favorite ride, but that time it seemed particularly rough, it even felt like we were going to flip at one point. I left saying to Mum, "Not sure we'll do that ride again, seems different." It really chilled me when a few days later I saw the helicopter hovering over Dreamworld, and I found out what happened.
Similar thing happened with my family when we were on holiday on the Gold Coast two weeks before this happened. It was a favourite of ours so we must have gone on it at least eight times. To say the least it was a huge shock to all of us when we saw the news.
I was a kid at the time, but I remember complaining the last few times we went on the rapids ride that it wasn't as fun anymore because we barely got splashed like we used to (now I presume due to the failing water pumps...)
My family rode this before this incident. I was 18 and on a family trip with them, with my insanely high anxiety I look at every ride in action before going on myself. Opted out of that one and the Gold rush that day. The ride was successful for my family but when I saw this on the news I felt validated
I would also check "Easily Preventable". When you started describing the collision between the two rafts, the first question that popped in my head was, "Why isn't the conveyor set up to automatically stop when the water level reaches some critical point?" Or perhaps some other automatic safety check such as ensuring there is no raft at the end of the conveyor. That seems incredibly obvious and would be ridiculously easy to employ as either an original design element or a simple retrofit.
From what I remember of the investigation that was carried out at the time, the ride was poorly maintained and suffered regular stoppages, but it was also very popular so maintenance staff were always under the pump to get it up and running again. Some safety-related measures for the pumps and conveyor machinery had likely been bypassed due to faults with the intention of "we'll fix it properly in the off season", but fixing it properly involved completely draining the ride and putting it out of commission for an extended period of time. Management says "we don't have the money/staff right now, but we'll definitely deal with it at some stage". Then some people die.
Ex operator here. From what I remember upon e-stopping the ride system did shutdown the conveyor system however I can't remember if it was automatic or needed operator intervention. This ride was incredibly complicated and overwhelming to operate and you really needed to focus. With electric motors there's residual energy as the motor spools down, this was enough to get the raft over the top of the conveyor. The Swiss cheese model where little decisions like not applying an instant brake to the motor were littered all over this ride. It's a shame because we took pride in knowing our procedures and operations but not even that was not enough for the management at the time to address the bigger problems at stake. Positively I can say that old school management are all gone and a new board was brought in a few years back and the standards are now very high. My condolences to the families taken on that day.
I was just coming down here to comment this, myself. It's astonishing that the operators weren't properly taught how to e-stop the ride. Nor were they likely trained on when to e-stop it. Lack of training, lack of maintenance, and lack of a proper safety culture is all too common the cause of these kinds of accidents.
because it was assembled by dumb local tradies who never ever think about "and what happens if...". Its 100% local tradition, I met it so many times, results are always devastating. Something does go wrong and ooops we did not think about this. Yes, because did not think at all.
LOL!...Yeah, sadly, even reputable theme park rides seem very threatening when you watch some of these videos......so, although there is presumed safety measures in place, that doesn't always mean they are going to work......or somehow get bypassed due to some kind of human error......
I have been on that ride many many times. Of all the rides in the park- that was the ride that no one thought to be scared of. It was calm down in between adrenaline spikes. This accident hit so hard because if you had me rate this rides of the park most likely to hurt people before that day- it would have been bottom of the list.
I remember seeing this on the news when I lived locally. The absolute horror that everyone felt. The consensus among everyone I knew was it finally happened. It finally broke so bad that it hurt someone. Then the aerial shots came out and the horror that everyone felt at seeing that raft sideways in the mechanics left us staring at the TV in horror in the office.
I put off watching this video because I remember the news coverage. I don't know anyone involved. I don't live in that area. I've never even been to Dreamworld. But it always had that feeling of "I could have been on that".
I remember it too. I was 8. My parents had been on the ride so so many times months before the accident, telling me about how fun it was. They were over there on holiday and I’m still sick to my stomach that it could have been them, leaving me and my siblings alone in Perth
Friend of a friend was one of the first responders. Dreamworld didnt actually tell 000 what had happened, so they thought it was somebody with a hand caught in a gear or something. One of the first ambos on the scene was a student paramedic and, needless to say, they were NOT prepared for what they saw.
how paramedic can be not prepared? Industrial incidents, car crashes, fires, heavy water burns (even from exploded kitchen pressure cooker) - all this requires to call Special Tuff Ambulance, as regular snowflakes can be harmed by all this? Wiskey tango foxtrot, how these guys got into ambulance at all! Even as student!
@@1D991 Student, yes. Paramedic student, not gardening or literature studies. Big surprise, paramedic job is not just Be Admired, but really cope with all this blood, suffer and death, really work in this condition and really do the best regardless of how it looks. Be ready for this from the very beginning, any moment, when it happens, not when you want. Or go to gardening design department.
@@antontsau there are levels of preparedness, and part of that is having the information ahead of time to know how many victims are involved, to what extent are the injuries, how severe are they, and so on. Obviously you can always go in blind and still be able to adjust or cope, but the speed and efficiency and lasting trauma of it can significantly be affected. If they aren't told what's coming then there would be no reason for an ambulance called to an amusement park to expect to see 4 mangled bodies with potentially dismembered parts to recover, water saturated in blood, and likely hysterical people in the vicinity. That isn't common at all-- it's incredibly unique to this situation in fact-- and certainly wouldn't have been anyone's previous experience upon responding to emergency calls at that location. I know I would certainly be at least a little thrown off to go into any situation expecting something maybe level 0.5 or 1 and walking right into level 100. Not to mention, paramedics or anyone in any field are human as well. It's not like trauma doesn't exist just because of your profession. If anything, you are exposed to it far more often than others are. So you develop coping skills but those coping mechanisms still are imperfect and they still work best with the proper level of information from the start.
I remember when this happened and how angry people across Australia were. For many of us, long before cheap flights to Bali and Phuket were a thing, a family holiday to the Gold Coast was a right of passage, and of course no trip to the Gold Coast would be complete without a visit to the theme parks. The River Rapids ride for many was a true highlight of the Dreamworld visit. So many people I spoke to at the time saw images of the ride post accident, and made the same comment, “where have all the slats gone from the conveyor?” Two out of every three slats on the conveyor were removed, turning what was a deck like platform into something that resembles the blades of a combine harvester. This was a ride that was built before many modern safety features were developed and mandated, yet somehow a major safety factor built into the ride was removed and nobody at the theme park noticed.
@@RosesTeaAndASD oh my god you're right I also never saw it down for maintenance... in the "the ride is down for maintenance" park. These comments are making me realise how dodgy it was omg.
@@BugOfficeSupplies I was 7 when I came to QLD and 36 when this tragedy happened. THAT'S how long my autistic brain had to process how strange this was.
Your bingo card should have been completely full - they did blame the kids messing round, and it was easily preventable and due to clear cost cutting (no interlocks)
Agreed, at every possible juncture to prevent this tragedy they made the wrong choice. That POS could have easily killed the first person to ride on it.
Wow, that’s horrifying they tried to blame the children. I have seen documentaries on this incident before, but they omitted that. Would any of you have a link to information on that?
Those poor ride operators. I can only imagine the guilt I would feel if I were running the controls that day. They clearly weren't given the proper tools or training but how could anyone not be permanently traumatized after being involved in something like this?
It has been a while since I read the inquest papers but from memory (others may be able to confirm) there's a section where the coroner specified the new operator was in no way to be blamed and was doing their best with what training they had been given.
I hope they realize that everyone knows they would've stopped it if they knew how to. I don't think anyone could blame them. Surely they would have prevented this if they knew how. That doesn't prevent feeling guilt though.
@@nthgthMaybe I'm playing devil's advocate, but there is only one reason those big red buttons with STOP hetched on them exist and are installed around machinery. If they were visible and reachable by operators, and not hidden away in some absurd place, there was no reason for them not to try pushing them when everything else failed, even if they weren't specifically trained to do so. They weren't even new to the park, they must have seen and maybe even used those same buttons on other rides before.
@@qdaniele97 The inquest and other documents go into a lot of detail about the buttons and lack of labels and variables like that. Unfortunatley it wasn't clear and simple and it was not the ride operators fault.
@@qdaniele97 I'd wager that they were directly told by supervisors NOT to hit the stop button under any circumstances, since it would take half an hour to get the death trap up and running again.
I had to change out the chain on an automatic oven because OSHA said the bars were too far apart and it could catch fingers and clothes. And I totally agreed with them. People will jam their limbs into moving machinery, especially if something like utensils get stuck. We also put rails on the outside so wires couldn't catch clothes and impel people toward more dangerous machinery. I'm skeptical that any of these machines could have killed someone. But it could have definitely injured someone badly. The idea of having reachable open slats that are strong enough to drag a vehicle full of adult humans is horrifying. We wouldn't install anything like that. If we were somehow forced to, it would have a lockout system and a limited set of trained employees, not families we found walking on the sidewalk.
I worked in a machine shop. Working with powerful automated machinery really really makes you thankful for safety features. Some of the old timers I worked with had lost fingers or parts of fingers back in the 60s and 70s in older equipment. And I absolutely hated running any equipment built before 1980. Even with the retro fitted safety features they weren't safe. I once had an old centerless grinder rip a part(it was a defective part outside tolerance that hadn't been caught in the quality checks) out of my hands and fire it along with part of the grinding wheel across the room at near bullet speeds. Luckily it missed me I only ended up with a nasty gash on my hand.
Yea I build industrial manufacturing machines in Germany for a while. We had one really nasty accident where a customer managed to trick several safety messures and lost his lower half due to a robotic transportation cart
@@NinoJoel having worked in manufacturing (machine shop) you would be shocked at how often people do their best to bypass safety features to increase work speed. There was one custom built milling machine I had to constantly double check to make sure the previous shift hadn't bypassed the infrared light fence it had instead of a door.
The system itself is acceptable, but only with no people around. It should be EMPTY raft lifted, unloaded before the lift and loaded after, but they went cheaper way, with the single unloading-loading platform.
@@markcarpenter6020 yea in my case it was a custom machine build to weld really large window frames. It had 4 robotic corners that moved together to any size the frame might be so all 4 corners could be automatically welded at the same time. It had a operator switch you had to hold for them to move. It had a light barrier covering the area you'd feed the frame parts. It had a high fence all around. That worker managed to damage a sensor. Tried to fix it himself. Got a co worker to hold down the button and managed to get behind the light barrier with a ladder.... All of that just to fix a 20$ sensor he broke... Losing both legs in the process.
I never returned after years before, I smacked my face into the back of the seat in front of me on the log ride. I didn’t realise I had blood running down my face until later. To exit the ride you walk past people waiting in the queue, and the people up front all gave me horrified looks because they saw the blood on my face before I even knew. All that the staff were interested in was rushing me past that queue. Nobody ever checked on me or asked if I was ok.
@@lordcaptainvonthrust3rd disney has extremely knowledgeable designers and developers now. Sure, the Matterhorn and Expedition had their flaws, but modern Disney rides run smoother than most out-of-house companies. The only problem is that even Disney ignores maintenance until the slow season
@@revairelum4871 Agreed 100% The problem isn't who designed or built the ride The problem is how any park allows the ride to be operated and/or maintains it thereafter 👍
Holy shit that's incredible that the guy was able to step in to apply CPR while being in the other raft involved in the incident, calm under pressure for sure
When situations arise, you don't think of yourself; you do what you can do without thinking of what it is you have to do. Much respect for people who jump in and get things done, when they need to be done.
Several people were given awards for their conduct in immediately responding. Including one of the victims, Luke Dorsett, who managed to save his niece from falling out into the conveyor. The governor general awarded him a posthumous commendation for brave conduct.
@@antontsaufr not everyone are scaredy cat rw’ers who just want to see people hurt (never met one that wants to help people) so its nice that empathetic people still exist in this world
I have to say I really enjoyed this style of editing. The same graphics we've all learnt to love but the transitions between them made everything just so much more better than before.
Dreamworld management of the 1980s also elected to engineer their own take of this ride, as opposed to buying a design already in use overseas. I'd wager this was where the trouble started.
They did have the original slat placement, though. They apparently didn't have the knowledge to either prevent damage to the system or the reason why it existed in the first place. I suppose consulting experts about the risks was too costly. While it had issues, it did seem to operate fairly normally during it's first years despite the under-preforming pumps. I'd say that the real problems started with refusal to update/upgrade any part of the system from the 1986 specs or do basic work on the ride is really what started this whole chain. If they had kept the original design they had, those nice people would have been laying on slats, not sucked into machinery. As our understanding of these types of rides has evolved, I also feel it was partly the fault of the state for not requiring automatic shut offs or other safety features that most rides would have had by 2016.
by "a lot of people in Australia are still quite traumatised from this event." i think you mean there are still some people who were involved hands on and some family members who are still traumatised..while the vast majority of Australians..lets say 99.9999999999% of them saw it on the news, thought, thats interesting/shocking and moved on quite rapidly. It didn't shock the whole country when it happened..it was a days headline and a leading news story for a 24 hour cycle -
@@JC-zv3cvNo. Imagine a mass shooting in Disneyland by a disgruntled worker, who then mutilated the bodies. This was a common point in many Australian childhoods. Myself and most of my friends rode this ride many times. I have a photo of me as a child in this ride. Traumatised might be a bit too strong, but it wasn’t part of the news cycle. Dreamworld attendances nosedived. It was a place whose selling point was happy whimsical memories. It’s similar to the challenger disaster, not quite as bad as 9/11.
You have covered this more accurately and informatively than any UA-cam video I’ve seen on this incident. Thank you for being the person who reads the actual reports on the topics you cover, the quality and understanding you bring is noticeable. This accident was so heartbreaking - like many other locals (and probably other commenters will have the same experience) I went on this ride from a young age. There's probably photos of me on it somehwere. The splashes from the rapids made it cool on hot days. It was nice to sit down after a day walking around in the park. It was the safe ride, the ride you could fill up the raft with your entire group of family or friends. The accident was shocking so to many of us who grew up on this ride and shattered our feelings of safety and familiarity towards it. I also had an incident on the nearby Mine ride once, the seatbelt slipped off my shoulder as I jolted around a corner that looked over the river rapids. Thankfully the cart was small and it was a tight fit with someone packed in next to you.
I didn't ever go to Dreamworld (but my wife and kids on that ride a few times); I had a lot of the same feelings about the Ghost Train in Sydney's Luna Park, which I'd been on a few days before and passed (on a train) on the night of the fire.
It was horrible, I've been to dream world twice in my life. Last was a out 4 years ago. Sadly you can guess when the first time I went. I won't go into much detail, my brain has tried its best to repress as much of that day as it can, it wasn't pleasant nor would my comment stay up for long if I did go into detail, and lastly and by far most importantly is, out of respect for the lives lost and their loved ones. What I will share was I was in line, far enough back that I got to see more than I'd have ever liked, it destroyed the life of some of the people there. But I will say it became chaos. Some people tried to help, some tried running, I vaguely remember running towards the accident, but I mostly remember the sounds, remember hearing some screaming, but I genuinely couldn't tell you where the screams came from. My heart really goes out to 4 lives lost, their families, the workers, and the emergency services that saw more than anyone should of. I will say seeing the photo of the accident drained my blood and has me in a bit of a daze when writing this.
Make sure you are checking in on yourself today. Touch base with family and friends, keep them in the loop. Trauma triggers can come out of nowhere and PTSD basically means your body remembers whatever the traumatic incident was, so you can get the same or similar physiological responses the body experienced during it. Having both been through a few traumatic incidents in my life and seeing clients as a mental health therapist, those feelings can take you back to that day. If you have a therapist, I highly encourage you to reach out to them, even if by text email or secure messaging, just to keep them in the loop. I'm sorry you had to experience such a horrific tragedy and I hope that time has helped to close those wounds, even if they have left a scar or two.
I've been in a few accidents, even saw a friend of mine get killed, and I want to share and be supportive, but I'll delete my comment if I'm out of line. Instead of talking about that death, I'll share a story of survival. Some years ago, I was operating a Crown monolift narrow aisle high reach truck, a 12,000lb (5,400kg) forklift designed to lift 40+ ft (13m) in the air. I had to grab a pallet of frozen food from the reserve rack to replenish a case pick location for the selectors. It was busy season, I was working long hours, fatigued and frustrated. Pallets of outbound product were staged on the floor of the aisle, in my way. I decided to shove it with the bumper of my power unit, instead of doing a 180° turn and moving it with my forks. The top left hand corner of the pallet snagged a vertical support beam of the reserve rack, and it twisted like a Rubik's cube. The top half of the pallet intruded into my driver compartment, struck me on the left shoulder, twisted my body, and pinned my right arm against the throttle. Every joint in my back cracked, making a sound like a zipper. All the air was crushed out of my lungs in one involuntary gasp. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. The motor at max torque, crushing me to death against 12,000 pounds of hilo and an immovable object. My rational thoughts were slowly drowned out by the pounding of my heart and screaming in my mind. "Please, I don't want to die! It hurts! Please, god, help me, I'm so afraid, I don't want to die alone!" I could see stars, my vision tunneled, and there was serenity. The pain went away. I was ready. I was ready to die. Then, the machine stopped. I heard the motor contactor click off and the lift released pressure. Adrenaline rushed and I clawed my way out of the driver compartment, taking huge breaths that made my ears pop. Air never tasted so good. I never reported it, just collected myself and went back to work. Smoked a few extra cigarettes that night, for sure.
Five lives ultimately lost as the husband of one of the victims killed himself by drowning in a river near Canberra a couple of years after this tragedy . He couldn’t bear living any more and left two kids orphans.
A pretty key difference with this ride (vs other ones in operation elsewhere in the world) is the "homebrew" aspect of things. If you go to a rapids ride at, say, Six Flags, it's going to be an Intamin or similar. And as they're a ride made by an established manufacturer, it comes with integrated PLC controls, safeties, etc. In fact, modern versions are so sensitive they practically shut down if you sneeze too hard. This ride, with its separated motor systems, with separated controls, was literally a disaster waiting to happen; it just took almost 40 years. The way it was "maintained" (e.g. lack thereof) just amplified the damage, and essentially guaranteed the loss of life when the inevitable finally happened.
ummmm... I was there in 2015. Cant say it looked very safe just by general design. Uncontrolled rafts floating down the stream with general public including small children, loaded (!!!) rafts lifting by machinery, huge water pumps right next to public walkways. Not a single thought "what happens if...". Then, when it crashed, more precise details exposed like no automatic interlocking and operators who cant even press the button, but it was the last slices of Swiss cheese.
The first thought was for those poor people and their families. The second thought was “that could have been us”. The third was that the theme parks would never be the same.
As a Gold Coast kid I’ve been to Dreamworld through the 90s countless times: it really was the best theme park of the 4 we have here in GC. River Rapids was one of my favourite rides along with the Gold Rush and Wipeout. I’ve ridden them countless times; and never in my life would I have thought a tragedy of this scenario would occur. Much appreciation and respect for all who responded and aided that day, and my deepest condolences to the families who were affected by this loss. It really shocked the nation when this happened and due to the severity of the incident I think a lot of us were not only troubled that it occurred in the first place, but also truly grieved for those who lost their lives and those who had to witness such a tragedy in person.
This incident was massive for Australia WHS it was the first case considered for industrial manslaughter. The report and investigation were read by most people in the safety field regardless of industry. It was a real learning moment. Major history point for Australian industrial safety.
I worked at a theme park in the area at the time. It was SCARY. There’s been a few things like that on the Gold Coast that becomes the big talk of the town. We had to do so much extra safety training after.
As a first aid officer at close by theme park that day I will never forget the hopelessness and horror hearing that unfold that day. Now as a paramedic, I still haven't seen anything as bad as what happened that day...
On your card i’d even argue for “easily preventable” because there were many factors that could have prevented this. If the infrastructure (pumps, or electrics running he pumps) were more robust, the pumps wouldn’t have tripped, if there was a level sensor that automatically stopped everything should the water level get to low, or even simply having the operator being told “hey, if things go very wrong, hit this big red button.” It’s another perfect example of the “Swiss Cheese Model” where just those little things align just right for a disaster. My heart still goes out for those families as they have been changed forever due to this incident
There were lots of stop buttons all over the place (they was spaced close to each other just in case someone fell in water low ), it’s so poor that extreme basic brain power of a human didn’t know how to press them,second was lack of failsafe when water level is low and when pump failure has happened and only enough pumps to fill the water up , really they should’ve had double the amount of pumps that were operating at 40% capacity each so one pump failure isn’t a problem (1 pump failure or not pumping fast enough was enough to shut the ride down assuming the operators noticed it and knew how to hit the big red button) and other one was landing zone off the ramp had that big gap (if the gap was not there, it would’ve just simply have pushed the two boats further along the rail But the ride was really old, so I’m guessing the pump thing was a bit harder to work out, but the safety system is definitely not You can use a stick with a float on the end with a switch that’s connected to the stop circuit (as a package £50 to 500 for bunch of them to be installed in different locations probably by there own on site engineers)
@@leexgx The inquest found that designing, installing, and testing an automatic low-water-level shutdown for the conveyor would likely have cost 2000-3000 AUD (1120-1680 GBP) (nominal 2016 figures not inflation adjusted). This assumes it would have been done as part of a conveyor control upgrade early that year (which included some automatic shutdowns, for the events of chain breakage or a raft getting stuck at the conveyor entrance). I very much doubt it would have been practical to achieve redundancy by installing even one additional pump. These pumps were fairly large, each about 360 kW (about 450 horsepower) with maximum flow of 4000 l/s, and had variable speed drive. I haven't been able to find consistent figures on cost, but it would clearly be many times more costly than a low-water-level shutdown.
This was horrible, the news travelled so fast despite the terrible details being withheld. You just knew it was a gruesome and tragic death for the four 😢
How was the training allowed to be so subpar that the operators didn't know what the E-Stop buttons were for? And the water level - all that would require is some simple float switches wired so that the conveyor system would stop until reset by an operator if a low-level float switch in the circuit was opened. They could have made this ride much safer for not a huge amount of money if they had cared at all.
I remember going to dreamworld as a child in the 80s and I would consider one of the best theme parks in that era. But coming into the 2000s, dreamworld faced serious competition from Warner brothers movie world which ate badly into their business. It got so bad that dreamworld was basically a relic of the 80s and 90a and cut corners everywhere. That plus being owned by a parent company meant needing to satisfy shareholders and we all know where that ends
Float switches are fine until they fail and no one knew what they were there for in the first place. Trained and competent staff are the only real way to keep things safe.
@wilsjane Nobody but the maintenance personnel in charge of inspecting them during scheduled downtime would need to know how they work or why they're there. If them failing closed is a concern, you could use two sets of floats beside each other (so they're reading the water level at the same point) in order to have redundancy. I see what you're saying about ensuring that training is up to a certain level, and that definitely important, but the goal when designing any system where human input is required is to engineer safeguards into the system which prevent the mistakes which human beings often make from causing a catastrophic failure - hence the need for things like the float switches and other sensors. For example, few people today would be comfortable flying with an airline whose planes had no modern safety systems installed (Stall warning, terrain warning, traffic warning, etc) designed into them. Something like an amusement park ride, where there's a potential for injury or death, shouldn't be any different.
They plead guilty, and one of the reasons would have been lack of training. They probably didn’t have a training program and didn’t record who had completed the training. More reliable than float switches would be something to identify if the pumps were working.
@@blackbird_actual Sadly, as recent history has shown, having planes with safety overrides without pilots who both understand them and know how to turn them off has killed more than 300 people, Boeing 737-MAX. Likewise, having safety equipment on a fairground ride is a very dangerous situation without staff who understand it, unless the engineer is onsite all the time. I am the retired chief engineer of a major company, and while not everyone could maintain or repair faults they knew how to shut equipment down. I also had a duty engineer onsite whenever we were open to the public. PS, No one has ever been killed in a UK theatre or cinema. But without correct engineering practice it certainly would have happened. A dropping safety curtain weighs around 3 tons.
I saw this notif and immediately clicked. I live nearby this place and have visited it since childhood (honestly wanna go visit it again during summer) but im surprised i didnt know about this!
I am surprised too. It was gigantic news, for months here in Brisbane (and probably all Australia). I guess it's strange how some things can disappear under our radar
What I will never understand, is how no one bats an eye when authorities come along after a tragedy and blame the owners of the ride for the problems and fine them, etc. But no one in authority that should’ve had inspection plans, certification requirements, and the authority to stop the tragedy before it even happened ever seem to get any blame. If this ride was in as poor of condition as people have reported, and if the safety mechanisms and procedures were as deficient as the report stated, why were there no inspections no certification required nothing that would’ve stopped the tragedy due to these deficiencies?
As a business owner, its your responsibility to understand health and safety law and to follow it. Yes, inspections are important but that doesn't take the blame away from the owners. If you don't know how to make a thing safe, you have no right trying to make money out of it.
@ I never suggested that the blame be taken away from the owners my point is that the blame that should be levied at authorities is all too often ignored. All the media coverage and the investigation report that was mentioned in this piece focused entirely on the park and mentioned nothing about the authorities entirely neglecting their responsibility to protect the public.
Basically the onus for health and safety (as defined in Queensland law) is on the "person conducting a business or undertaking" to ensure that they are working safely. The health and safety inspectors are not theme park engineers, they are not trained to be theme park engineers. The assumption is that if you want to run a theme park, then that's on you. Health and safety inspections basically are just to confirm that you have a safe system of work in place, not that it's suitable or adequate or takes into consideration every possible risk, as the business operator is going to understand that better than anyone else (assumingly).
I remember this like it was yesterday. I heard about it at work and was horrified to read the details. When I arrived home my 16 year old daughter was in tears saying “those poor people!” Lifelong emotional scars for all those involved in this tragedy
I’ll never forget when this happened. My heart still goes out to their families and loved ones, the Aussie theme park scene has really never been the same since
I used to work at Six Flags St Louis and the year I worked at Thunder River, they made sure to hammer in the lessons that this tragedy taught. For example, in the event of an overturned boat or a person in the water, immediately E-stop the ride. It'll cut all power to the ride
yeah, its sad that at the least, this wasn't the number ONE priority to know by these operators.....who I'm sure, if they did, they would have stopped the ride before this tragedy unfolded.....
absolutely right and obvious idea. Something goes wrong - press Big Red Button, then start to do anything. I cant even imagine how dumb needs to be to not do it without special extensive training.
I don't understand why companies don't do an emergency stop drills on equipment like this at regular intervals. It sounds like it would be something fun and exciting for the operators, which would make it more memorable and more likely for them to get it right in the event of an actual emergency. Drills also let you discover flaws in your procedures or a breakdown in machinery, before an actual emergency.
Every morning you include an E-stop procedure. That’s what we did at another park in the area. It’s SUPER important that you know how to operate these amusement devices. There heavy machines
That's alarmingly close to being a free space, though. Especially if you throw out a bit of realism - With literally infinite budget to hire engineers to think through and design around every possible event for every modification almost every accident could be prevented. But, as an engineer, I feel confident in saying nothing would ever actually get built if you let us go at optimizing safety with no constraints.
@@antontsau It requires them to be told about it . . . that does take time and planning. Did the people running the thing even know what systems that button would shut down? And really that button should have been interlocked to the pumps. The fact it wasn't was a cost cutting measure during design and install.
@squee222 and also not to forget to train them to push a spoon into the mouth, not to ear. Kindergarten. Yes of course. Electrical design there was really terrible.
For the most part it was a lack of a automated fail safe system that basically turned off the conveyor system when the water got too low which is probably a £50 item even the 1950s they probably would’ve just used a float switch connected to the stop circuit Which would cost less than £10 to prevent this disaster (the other issue was was the rail being so far away from the conveyor if the rail was all the way up to the conveyor they just simply would’ve bumped each other and pushed it slightly further along) The stupid thing is it had happened I believe a couple of years prior to this and they still did not implement any fail safe instead they fired the person for not pressing the stop button and still didn’t implement a fail safe system
Stuff like this makes an instrumentation tech seethe. A $5 sump pump float switch tied into the conveyor control circuit could have prevented this. Or extend the support rails an extra 2'. Or even simpler still, a single piece of wire could have tied the pump trip into the conveyor control. Such small change could have saved lives.
I’ve been on that ride several times as a kid and ended up taking my kid on it, and have photos from being on it. So much fun and a highlight of Dreamworld visits. Absolutely horrific what happened. We were devastated.
I dont remember if I was living on the Gold Coast or still home in Brisbane (under an hour away) at the time of this event happening but it was a significant event throught the region for a long time. I would later meet one of the first Police Officers on the scene of the ride tragedy, and this still haunts him today. The event was also investigated by Worksafe Queensland, the body for policing Workplace Health and Safety laws in Qld, from very shortly after the incident, if not straightaway.
Sad. None of them knew which button to stop the ride, none were even trained to recognise a situation where a stop would save a life. It didn't auto stop when water drops below a certain level, mechanism that would cost very little. Hard to believe four people's lives can only be worth 3 million dollars in fines. I guess the media made sure trust in the park was gone at least.
John, I think you should have included Cost Cutting in your BINGO card. Had the pumps and conveyor gears been designed, constructed and the system built for the specific purpose of maintaining the correct water flow and supply as well as running the conveyor, the mechanism wouldn’t have needed slats removed to reduce stress on that portion of the system. As soon you said the owner used “off the shelf” parts like pumps as well as the design-specific built mechanisms, I knew that would be a factor. At this point no one should ever be designing amusement park rides of any kind that can be Frankenstein-ed together with any parts that can be bought at a DIY store. The bolts may be standard sized, but I doubt DIY stores are carrying bolts of a strong and resilient enough material for amusement park rides. A water pump system likely used for moving/delivering water on a farm is not meant for dealing with an amusement park ride. A water pump losing pressure to an irrigation system is not the same red flag as water pump losing pressure on a “rushing rapids” ride where maintaining water levels is life threatening.
I worked with the naval architect who was responsible for trying to recreate the accident with weighted dummies and rafts with the same displacement and trim. They (the cops and engineers) really struggled to get the flip to happen.
@biggiouschinnus7489 they are big, but it wasn't really about size, it was more about trying to exactly recreate accident, they needed someone with the technical knowledge to accurately model what happened. Those rafts were incredibly stable, it took a lot of things going wrong in the exact right way to cause the accident as it occurred resulting in loss of life.
Our state fairgrounds had one of these rides. It was very popular for years as August weather in my state has been referred to as "hell's front porch". The ride has been completely removed now. I wonder how many places preemptively got rid of those rides based on tragedies elsewhere.
The SeaWorld helicopter accident could be a good follow up to this video. I went there in 2019 and even saw one of the helicopters involved in the accident, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Makes you shiver, We have been on the Thunder Rapids ride many times. And of course we did the Seawold Helicopter ride.. Brrrrrrr Chills me to hear about these deaths. My thoughts go to the familys and loved ones. PW. Australia.
I'm consistently amazed at so many bad decisions made around the world that don't even meet basic Engineering 101 principles. Engineers aren't hard to find -- we're here and there's good reason to listen to us.
All emergency stops SHALL be tested daily before ride/equipment placed in-service. Atleast they would have known they work and location reminder. It's a bloody no brainer!
I visited Dreamworld in the mid 80s - I think it was before the River Rapids ride was installed - it was a great venue - the roller coaster was awesome. as was the Imax screen. its a pity that things went wrong.
I was shocked to find out there have been several thunder river accidents. its always been my favorite ride because it always seems so benign but still fun. just serves as a reminder that there is no such thing as "benign" rides. all have potential for danger especially if neglect is involved.
I live about 15 minutes drive from Dreamworld and rode this ride many times before the tragedy. The machinery always concerned me on this ride. Riders travelled straight across the top of the exposed gears, slats and chains which drove the rafts across the conveyor. Other parts of the loading area, not shown in this video, also used large wheels to propel the rafts from below; these wheels could have been installed to push the rafts from the sides to reduce the risk of anyone falling into the wheel wells. Australia has very strict laws for carnival rides. Under Australian laws, the removal or modification of machinery parts such as the conveyor slats must be signed off by a qualified engineer and the ride must be recertified. I don't know if this ever happened. Dreamworld had been struggling financially at the time and the park had been starting to show its age with many pathways, rides and attractions starting to show wear and tear. Interlocks could have been fitted to shut down the conveyor automatically if water levels dropped below the critical level, but none were ever installed. The loading area of the ride always worried me slightly and seemed an unnecessarily dangerous arrangement, especially considering the strictness of Australian workplace and carnival ride laws. A couple of notes: The mine cart ride, an indoor mini rollercoaster, was closed down about the mid to late 1990s due to mounting maintenance costs. The fibreglass mountain it was in was converted to a storage area for the park, The two survivors from the raft were the young children of adults who died in the tragedy. Coomera is pronounced "COOM-era", not "coo-MER-a".
I was there at the opening of Dreamworld, $20 per person back then. It was a place that Australia had never experienced before. When the accident happened, no one could understand how it came about. It was horrifying and we thought Dreamworld would stay closed forever. I was thinking about going to Dreamworld on that day with my kids but changed my mind thank god. It was very shocking, I think the whole of Australia was rattled by it. My brother in law was in charge of the digital photos and he needed some counselling. Thanks for showing me what happened in pictures. And for the brief origins of the park.
My daughter and i rode that ride heaps of times, when not being fatal it was light-hearted fun. Between 2010 and 2014 (I bought us annual tickets to Dreamworld) The news affected lots of people as most people in our area have gone once. Seen lots of comments from Queenslanders, remember how my heart sank when I heard of this disaster
the best part about this was that it was a known issue that had been there so long that basically everyone who has ever ridden it is familiar with the service operator having to come and get u unstuck at the bend where it happened
This was on the news constantly for weeks as information slowly came out. My family had the news on every night back then, and everyone was desperate for information. In the first few days it was (incorrectly) reported that most the dead were from my town and I dreaded that it'd be someone I know, or an acquaintance thereof. Even the disaster videos I've seen since haven't given the level of detail of the deaths given in the news in those weeks following the accident. It doesn't bear repeating. I feel sick remembering it, and I can only hope those actually involved or who witnessed the accident can find some peace. Absolutely horrific, absolutely preventable.
Someone/s on that board should be doing time for their his/her negligence…legal system got them off with spreading the blame to inanimate things to cloud the real cause . People make the decisions not objects .Safety should be one of their major concerns and is surely their job and responsibility…their actions/inactions led directly to this horrific outcome and they should have been punished as such . They had many opportunities from past equipment failure to act and didn’t address them …this was so avoidable …
Since the company was publicly traded, I think its probably safe to check off "cost cutting" since it was almost certainly a contributing factor as to why proper fixes weren't made. So many disasters happen because quaterly or annual budgets take precedence over safety in many public companies.
Because they didn’t want to install a £10 safety float switch to automatically stop the water and conveyer (it probably a lot more for being installed and stuff, but it wouldn’t be more than £500) it cost them at least £300 million (between stock losses was the biggest one , destroying the ride and the one next to it that also got condemned, the park being closed, paying out all the families and the silly small £3 million fine)
On 3 July, 2021 an accident on the Raging River took the life of 11 year old Michael Jaramillo. The ride was at Adventureland Park in Altoona, IA. His raft was similar to the one shown in this video. He and his family boarded the raft and noted that one of the air bladders was low. It had caused the raft to take on extra water. The ride attendants boarded them on the lopsided raft and sent them down the chute. During the turbulent ride, the deflated area of the raft took on more water until the whole raft flipped upside down. Young Michael was trapped underneath, and couldn't be freed in time to save his life. The park closed the ride and never reopened it. The owners of the park at the time of the accident sold the park to another investor.
the theme park is still trying to recover today their line up and safety standards are so much better now the even opened so many new rides but still don’t have the same crowds as the other parks on the gold oast
I had been on the ride many times over the years, and remember it fondly from the time when it first opened (and was quite reliable). I remember thinking after riding it after a significant number of slats had been removed, "This is an accident waiting to happen", as the ride had never had any harnesses to keep people inside the raft. I was shocked to hear the news when it broke about fatalities on the ride, as I had been on that ride only a few months prior. To not have any automatic safety equipment installed was unbelievable, particularly as the ride had been operating for some 30 years and everything wears over time.
My unforgettable experience on one of these rides was at Six Flags San Antonio. A water moccasin swam up and slithered right into our raft! Luckily no one got bitten, but my god it was terrifying.
The original turntable to get on the ride was an injury waiting to happen as you used to walk from a fixed object onto a rotating turntable to enter the boats. I'm not sure how many elderly or people with walking difficulties may have fallen but even to me as a fit person this ride was a challenge from day 1 that later benefitted from a concrete fixed platfowm replacing the origina woodenl turntable.
All I can say is good about this tragedy is thank god the kids got out. Those adults really pushed themselves in their final moments to get those kids off safe. Despite the horrible circumstances all I can hope is they knew the children were safe before they went.
I grew up in banyo, catching the train to the Gold Coast while skipping school to sneak into dream-world through the fence next to the Big Brother house, going on the giant drop, rapids, I was there the day the cyclone was opened up, shame it's a shit hole now 😊
John, could you please add to your list the Battersea Park funfair big dipper disaster. I had a relative that rode on it earlier that day it happened. Thanks John and have a great holidays and seasons greets....
The bingo card may have needed cost cutting marked. At the inquest cost cutting in ride maintenance, engineering, understaffing and staff training was noted as a factor
Thanks for covering this one. It was devastating! I still haven’t been to Dreamworld, but it’s been on my list for years! Still trying to decide if I want to go now. We usually end up at Movieworld.
We had snow here yesterday in York, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸. Luckily, none of it stuck to the roads and the drive home was easy. It’s sunny today but only 32 degrees Fahrenheit (freezing). Brr 🥶
This was terrible,Knowing how preventable this was with the inclusion of a simple emergency stop button,if the slats weren't removed, nobody would have fallen through and died.And if the pumps were fixed and replaced this would not have happened at all.
This disaster was actually the first major loss of life at an Australian theme park in modern history, after the 1979 ghost train fire at Sydney’s lunar park. Practically all Australians at some point end up visiting the gold coasts parks, so almost everyone here born after 1986 has likely been on the ride, including myself. I think the impact of this disaster (socially) was very large due to this. Most people felt bad for the park and its workers, and of course for the poor victims who tragically lost their lives. It was a very sobering reminder of the dangers of complicity, becuase most people don’t really imagine that of all the rides that would take multiple lives, it would be the most low intensity, mundane and boring ride. Usually these types of child and toddler friendly rides are not the ones you see deaths on around the world.
I used to work at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. While the Walt Disney Company has certainly been slacking on ride maintenance and upkeep in recent years, they do have the gold standard in Cast Member training. I had four days of training before I could start my job as a retail Cast Member--and a friend who worked on the Finding Nemo Submarines had nearly two weeks of training! 😊
I love theme parks but I hate those type of rides, they’re so unpredictable, banging into the walls, never know which way they’ll spin, some people trying to rock it on purpose, get wet, at least with roller coasters you’re strapped in and the only thing stupid people can do is raise their hands while the bar digs in their stomach
Gosh it feels like it happened so much longer ago than 2016. Used to ride thunder river rapids heaps when I was younger, was pretty scary that such a "tame" ride could go so wrong.
I visited the gulf coast, USA, not long before Katrina hit. That fact always made me feel the impact of that disaster on a personal level that I know I don't really have a right feel because I wasn't there when it all went down. I've always wondered if this is a normal human reaction or if I'm just a weirdo? So, I'm curious if you had a similar experience with your 'near miss'? -- Very glad you weren't a victim, by the way.
@@ejtappan1802 Can't say it impacted me on such a level, it was more of a reminder not to take life for granted, you never know what is around the corner. I think if I had have taken the ride on the same day it would have been a different story. Was a very popular ride, so many people really had a near miss on that day.
"And mr Music, can you do us a favor and play us out please" John's line has changed... I wonder if Mr Music will soon say "No" when he asks for the video to end, so he had to start to ask in even more British ways.
Somehow being strapped into that thing looks dangerous to me... If it overturned somehow you'd be underwater trying to undo a belt... And if it overturns on the belt, well, we know what happens because of this.....
@@volvo09 my recollection of the dreamworld ride the belts were wide (2-3 inches?) blue velcro, not a bar or belt. Can't say how much differnece that would make in an emergency vs other types of restraints.
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In Des Moines, Iowa USA at Adventureland, we had a similar Intamin ride. In 2021 there was a fatal accident on the Raging River at Adventureland.
@@zepplin810Yep, learned about that right before going to it last year and I went on the monster and it felt like I was gonna fall out cause of how loose the lap restraints were
you should look into the ppb or pbb poisoning in Michigan, it was in the 70s I believe, I found out about it not too long ago and thought it was interesting
The ride was built with multiple automated safety features as standard and there's evidence of this.
When the ride became unsafe and kept tripping these safety cut-offs, the park owner removed them.
This wasn't negligence, this was blatant disregard for the customer's safety.
And what was the council doing to inspect the ride that was clearly breaking every rule in the book.
What's the song you use during the video it sounds pretty damn good
Those who died fell into the moving conveyor and its machinery. They were said to have received “injuries incompatible with life”, which is a polite way of saying “mangled”.
Apparently some of the responders needed counselling, such was the state of the bodies.
I remember seeing something about this. And the medic on scene who used that phrase, when interviewed, received a lot of flak for it. But there was no bad intent on his part. Just a medical term. He wound up applying for disability and a desk job because he was so traumatized but the authorities refused.
@@davidcox3076iirc, the term is formally defined to cover injuries such that paramedics are not expected to attempt resuscitation ( because it would be impossible).
I think that's the phrase used in law where injuries are so bad you don't need a doctor to declare someone dead, or to check for a pulse, etc.
I am a local and have heard from a cop that spoke to the investigators that saw the aftermath, "mangled" is an understatement. More like _dismembered... mutilated._
ok, I was wondering how these people died as I either didn't understand what the narrator said or I felt like he skipped over it and just said 4 people died without explaining how......anyway, that makes total sense now; however, curiously, I guess these floating boat things didn't have any seat belt type like restraints and this is why people got thrown out of them to their deaths, or did they undo them mistakenly out of panic to try and get out of the craft? If they didn't have any restraints I suppose I could understand this as if it were to capsized the idea would be that the rider could keep themselves from drowning by escaping from underneath of it. but again, perhaps not have restraints would be a safety violation....anyway, this is sad to see and that at the minimum the operators should have been informed of where the shut down button or switch was......and how terrible to be going to an amusement park for fun and having this happen to you........I hope the families were able to sue this company as I recall hearing that at the least the government fined them for their lack of proper safety protocols......
They didnt just die, they were torn apart and trapped in the gears and pulleys of the conveyer belt. The emergency service workers who attended had to get counselling afterwards it was so bad. I wonder how the two kids who survived the accident are now, and hope they have recovered as best as they can.
I thought there was decapitation involved 😢
@@t33ny76 I would assume so, those motorized slats would tear anything apart that gets stuck.
Must have been a gruesome scene.
What parts were torn off and in what order?
@@eadweard. Good grief 😮
Don't blame John. Blame UA-cam. The amount of words you're not allowed to say is getting ridiculous
Imo the biggest factor in the disaster was the removal of the slats off the conveyor. They essentially created a human mincer. Had they left the slats on nobody would have been able to fall through into the machinery and I doubt there'd be any fatalities. How this wasn't considered a major hazard at the time of the modification is insane
That’s some insight I gained from this video as well. Once the slats were removed and further spaced out I was like ‘Ohhhh’ 😬
I knew when he mentioned than the slats and their spacing were for safety that they'd play a role in the disaster. In general most rides which are designed by companies specializing in them are safe. Altering their design without consulting them is clearly negligent and overtly stupid. On changing anything anywhere, go ahead and do it if you're smarter than the engineers who designed it. Otherwise maybe best to leave it alone.
And going back further… if they had actually installed more powerful machinery up front; the dangerous sequence of ‘Mickey Mouse’ modifications would have never started
Yes sure that's an issue, but the conveyor was still moving so just because the slats aren't there doesn't mean that disaster would have been averted because they would have still been pushed underneath the tipped over raft.
The real issue was poor maintenance records and undertrained staff
Ænema???
The coroners report (available free online) is both an interesting and upsetting read.
Possibly the most horrifying part, to me, was that investigators spent hours trying to replicate the accident, but couldn't actually do it. Even with all of the glaring issues and obvious neglect, the ride was still *relatively* unlikely to kill anyone.
Everything just aligned perfectly that day, every bit of bad design, bad maintenance, bad operator training and procedures, and sheer bad luck. And so four people died.
Makes you think about how many incidents never happen. How many times people come far closer to being mangled than they'll ever know, but one domino in the cascade is just slightly out of line, so they walk away and carry on with their lives, and the deathtrap lies there in wait for the next time.
The thing all engineers should do when designing stuff like this is remember a 0.000001% chance of something happening isn't good enough it's needs to be impossible
@montyshark3993 well that's impossible, nothing can be entirely prevented, just mitigated to reasonable risk.
Additionally, it often stated that no one thing can create a catastrophe, but a series of generally small mistakes or problems that get compounded.
In which case engineering to make things immune to risk is beyond reasonable.
So to paraphrase, basically it was some _Final Destination_ -type stuff 😨
@montyshark3993 no, designers work to reduce risk to ALARP. As Low As Reasonably Practicable.
This is the part that chills me. I grew up 10 minutes down the highway from dreamworld and me and my friends just always had annual passes because they were dirt cheap for local residents. We'd been on that ride legitimately hundreds of times and as stupid teenagers done shit like try to run the boat into the walls or stick our hands in the water to spray each other. I was on the ride less than a week before that awful day, and I'll never forget the mood at school in the days following. Everyone was completely devastated that people died in such a horrible way and sickened thinking about how random circumstances and sheer luck meant the tragedy happened to someone else and not them. What gets me is exactly what you said, how most tragedies are never caused by one thing and are almost always just a random series of misfortunes that are completely impossible to predict. So many of my friends, and myself, never went back on any of the rides because the anxiety just wasn't worth it.
I actually studied & worked at Dreamworld's Training Cafe around the time the incident happened. I was supposed to work the very day it happened, but I fell sick beforehand. My fellow students & co-workers had the day off to ride the rides, including the River Rapids, just a couple of weeks before the incident. Let me tell you, the thing was barely chugging along. The animatronics were missing limbs & skin & rarely moved. I talked about it with a security guard who had worked at the park for decades & he said that the ride was poorly designed from the get-go. Apparently, there wasn't an easy way for tradies to enter & repair any faults, among other issues. We agreed that it should've been demolished & replaced years ago, lo & behold, a couple weeks later & the incident happened.
But...but...think about the shareholders? Who will mourn for them?
thanks for info
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Even though greediness and/or poor oversight by management is overwhelmingly found to be the primary concern in the majority of these cases, I can't begin to understand why incidents like these have happened and continue to happen again and again. Its heartbreaking to believe that human lives aren't worth anything more then the cost of a quick fix, let alone the cost of properly and permanently repaired attractions. Ouch!! I hope you've been able to heal and grow since you experienced this and that you never have to be any part of a any disaster ever again. Thanks again and be well.
... lo and behold, a what?
The ride wasn’t built by a reputable company like Intamin, the abandoned theme park Australia’s Wonderland did have an Intamin river rapids ride but Dreamland decided to backward engineer a ride based on the one in Sydney instead using a local construction company, therefore it was never a proper designed ride just Australian ingenuity, and they got it wrong
Two days before this happened, I rode this ride with my kids and my Mum. It used to be our favorite ride, but that time it seemed particularly rough, it even felt like we were going to flip at one point. I left saying to Mum, "Not sure we'll do that ride again, seems different." It really chilled me when a few days later I saw the helicopter hovering over Dreamworld, and I found out what happened.
Similar thing happened with my family when we were on holiday on the Gold Coast two weeks before this happened. It was a favourite of ours so we must have gone on it at least eight times. To say the least it was a huge shock to all of us when we saw the news.
I have a photo of myself and my family on it a week or 2 before. Our favourite ride as a kid so it was top of our list.
I was a kid at the time, but I remember complaining the last few times we went on the rapids ride that it wasn't as fun anymore because we barely got splashed like we used to (now I presume due to the failing water pumps...)
My family rode this before this incident. I was 18 and on a family trip with them, with my insanely high anxiety I look at every ride in action before going on myself. Opted out of that one and the Gold rush that day. The ride was successful for my family but when I saw this on the news I felt validated
I would also check "Easily Preventable". When you started describing the collision between the two rafts, the first question that popped in my head was, "Why isn't the conveyor set up to automatically stop when the water level reaches some critical point?" Or perhaps some other automatic safety check such as ensuring there is no raft at the end of the conveyor. That seems incredibly obvious and would be ridiculously easy to employ as either an original design element or a simple retrofit.
From what I remember of the investigation that was carried out at the time, the ride was poorly maintained and suffered regular stoppages, but it was also very popular so maintenance staff were always under the pump to get it up and running again. Some safety-related measures for the pumps and conveyor machinery had likely been bypassed due to faults with the intention of "we'll fix it properly in the off season", but fixing it properly involved completely draining the ride and putting it out of commission for an extended period of time. Management says "we don't have the money/staff right now, but we'll definitely deal with it at some stage". Then some people die.
Ex operator here. From what I remember upon e-stopping the ride system did shutdown the conveyor system however I can't remember if it was automatic or needed operator intervention. This ride was incredibly complicated and overwhelming to operate and you really needed to focus. With electric motors there's residual energy as the motor spools down, this was enough to get the raft over the top of the conveyor. The Swiss cheese model where little decisions like not applying an instant brake to the motor were littered all over this ride. It's a shame because we took pride in knowing our procedures and operations but not even that was not enough for the management at the time to address the bigger problems at stake. Positively I can say that old school management are all gone and a new board was brought in a few years back and the standards are now very high. My condolences to the families taken on that day.
I was just coming down here to comment this, myself. It's astonishing that the operators weren't properly taught how to e-stop the ride. Nor were they likely trained on when to e-stop it. Lack of training, lack of maintenance, and lack of a proper safety culture is all too common the cause of these kinds of accidents.
I'd add cost cutting too as it seems clear they needed new pumps and or upgraded ones if they kept tripping out
because it was assembled by dumb local tradies who never ever think about "and what happens if...". Its 100% local tradition, I met it so many times, results are always devastating. Something does go wrong and ooops we did not think about this. Yes, because did not think at all.
"Something as non threatening as a theme park ride"
Me: *having listened to hours of theme park disaster videos* "Haha. Yeah....non threatening..."
Me playing rtc 2 open: yea no problem what so ever *coaster gets sent flying to blow up riders*
Agreed. And I hadn't even seen any theme park disaster videos before this. Theme park rides are dangerous, that's why they strap you in, duh.
LOL!...Yeah, sadly, even reputable theme park rides seem very threatening when you watch some of these videos......so, although there is presumed safety measures in place, that doesn't always mean they are going to work......or somehow get bypassed due to some kind of human error......
Also look up theme park legislation, or rather, the total lack thereof.
I have been on that ride many many times. Of all the rides in the park- that was the ride that no one thought to be scared of. It was calm down in between adrenaline spikes. This accident hit so hard because if you had me rate this rides of the park most likely to hurt people before that day- it would have been bottom of the list.
I remember seeing this on the news when I lived locally. The absolute horror that everyone felt. The consensus among everyone I knew was it finally happened. It finally broke so bad that it hurt someone. Then the aerial shots came out and the horror that everyone felt at seeing that raft sideways in the mechanics left us staring at the TV in horror in the office.
I remember it too. I was in high school at the time. It was a somber week.
I put off watching this video because I remember the news coverage. I don't know anyone involved. I don't live in that area. I've never even been to Dreamworld. But it always had that feeling of "I could have been on that".
I remember it too. I was 8. My parents had been on the ride so so many times months before the accident, telling me about how fun it was. They were over there on holiday and I’m still sick to my stomach that it could have been them, leaving me and my siblings alone in Perth
I have been on that ride every time I went to dreamworld. It sucks that this situation happened
Friend of a friend was one of the first responders. Dreamworld didnt actually tell 000 what had happened, so they thought it was somebody with a hand caught in a gear or something. One of the first ambos on the scene was a student paramedic and, needless to say, they were NOT prepared for what they saw.
how paramedic can be not prepared? Industrial incidents, car crashes, fires, heavy water burns (even from exploded kitchen pressure cooker) - all this requires to call Special Tuff Ambulance, as regular snowflakes can be harmed by all this? Wiskey tango foxtrot, how these guys got into ambulance at all! Even as student!
@@antontsauDo you not read? STUDENT
@@1D991 Student, yes. Paramedic student, not gardening or literature studies. Big surprise, paramedic job is not just Be Admired, but really cope with all this blood, suffer and death, really work in this condition and really do the best regardless of how it looks. Be ready for this from the very beginning, any moment, when it happens, not when you want. Or go to gardening design department.
@@antontsau there are levels of preparedness, and part of that is having the information ahead of time to know how many victims are involved, to what extent are the injuries, how severe are they, and so on. Obviously you can always go in blind and still be able to adjust or cope, but the speed and efficiency and lasting trauma of it can significantly be affected.
If they aren't told what's coming then there would be no reason for an ambulance called to an amusement park to expect to see 4 mangled bodies with potentially dismembered parts to recover, water saturated in blood, and likely hysterical people in the vicinity. That isn't common at all-- it's incredibly unique to this situation in fact-- and certainly wouldn't have been anyone's previous experience upon responding to emergency calls at that location. I know I would certainly be at least a little thrown off to go into any situation expecting something maybe level 0.5 or 1 and walking right into level 100.
Not to mention, paramedics or anyone in any field are human as well. It's not like trauma doesn't exist just because of your profession. If anything, you are exposed to it far more often than others are. So you develop coping skills but those coping mechanisms still are imperfect and they still work best with the proper level of information from the start.
I don’t think ANYONE would have been.
I remember when this happened and how angry people across Australia were. For many of us, long before cheap flights to Bali and Phuket were a thing, a family holiday to the Gold Coast was a right of passage, and of course no trip to the Gold Coast would be complete without a visit to the theme parks. The River Rapids ride for many was a true highlight of the Dreamworld visit.
So many people I spoke to at the time saw images of the ride post accident, and made the same comment, “where have all the slats gone from the conveyor?” Two out of every three slats on the conveyor were removed, turning what was a deck like platform into something that resembles the blades of a combine harvester.
This was a ride that was built before many modern safety features were developed and mandated, yet somehow a major safety factor built into the ride was removed and nobody at the theme park noticed.
I never saw it down for maintenance, which concerned me and so I never rode it.
@@RosesTeaAndASD oh my god you're right I also never saw it down for maintenance... in the "the ride is down for maintenance" park. These comments are making me realise how dodgy it was omg.
@@BugOfficeSupplies I was 7 when I came to QLD and 36 when this tragedy happened.
THAT'S how long my autistic brain had to process how strange this was.
Your bingo card should have been completely full - they did blame the kids messing round, and it was easily preventable and due to clear cost cutting (no interlocks)
Yeah I was going to say easily preventable definitely needed a mark.
Agreed, should have been a full card, one of the first
Agreed, at every possible juncture to prevent this tragedy they made the wrong choice. That POS could have easily killed the first person to ride on it.
Wow, that’s horrifying they tried to blame the children. I have seen documentaries on this incident before, but they omitted that. Would any of you have a link to information on that?
Wasn't there also something about a lack of inspections and certifications of rides by qualified engineers as well?
Those poor ride operators. I can only imagine the guilt I would feel if I were running the controls that day. They clearly weren't given the proper tools or training but how could anyone not be permanently traumatized after being involved in something like this?
It has been a while since I read the inquest papers but from memory (others may be able to confirm) there's a section where the coroner specified the new operator was in no way to be blamed and was doing their best with what training they had been given.
I hope they realize that everyone knows they would've stopped it if they knew how to. I don't think anyone could blame them. Surely they would have prevented this if they knew how.
That doesn't prevent feeling guilt though.
@@nthgthMaybe I'm playing devil's advocate, but there is only one reason those big red buttons with STOP hetched on them exist and are installed around machinery.
If they were visible and reachable by operators, and not hidden away in some absurd place, there was no reason for them not to try pushing them when everything else failed, even if they weren't specifically trained to do so.
They weren't even new to the park, they must have seen and maybe even used those same buttons on other rides before.
@@qdaniele97 The inquest and other documents go into a lot of detail about the buttons and lack of labels and variables like that. Unfortunatley it wasn't clear and simple and it was not the ride operators fault.
@@qdaniele97 I'd wager that they were directly told by supervisors NOT to hit the stop button under any circumstances, since it would take half an hour to get the death trap up and running again.
I had to change out the chain on an automatic oven because OSHA said the bars were too far apart and it could catch fingers and clothes. And I totally agreed with them. People will jam their limbs into moving machinery, especially if something like utensils get stuck. We also put rails on the outside so wires couldn't catch clothes and impel people toward more dangerous machinery. I'm skeptical that any of these machines could have killed someone. But it could have definitely injured someone badly.
The idea of having reachable open slats that are strong enough to drag a vehicle full of adult humans is horrifying. We wouldn't install anything like that. If we were somehow forced to, it would have a lockout system and a limited set of trained employees, not families we found walking on the sidewalk.
I worked in a machine shop. Working with powerful automated machinery really really makes you thankful for safety features. Some of the old timers I worked with had lost fingers or parts of fingers back in the 60s and 70s in older equipment. And I absolutely hated running any equipment built before 1980. Even with the retro fitted safety features they weren't safe. I once had an old centerless grinder rip a part(it was a defective part outside tolerance that hadn't been caught in the quality checks) out of my hands and fire it along with part of the grinding wheel across the room at near bullet speeds. Luckily it missed me I only ended up with a nasty gash on my hand.
Yea I build industrial manufacturing machines in Germany for a while.
We had one really nasty accident where a customer managed to trick several safety messures and lost his lower half due to a robotic transportation cart
@@NinoJoel having worked in manufacturing (machine shop) you would be shocked at how often people do their best to bypass safety features to increase work speed. There was one custom built milling machine I had to constantly double check to make sure the previous shift hadn't bypassed the infrared light fence it had instead of a door.
The system itself is acceptable, but only with no people around. It should be EMPTY raft lifted, unloaded before the lift and loaded after, but they went cheaper way, with the single unloading-loading platform.
@@markcarpenter6020 yea in my case it was a custom machine build to weld really large window frames.
It had 4 robotic corners that moved together to any size the frame might be so all 4 corners could be automatically welded at the same time.
It had a operator switch you had to hold for them to move.
It had a light barrier covering the area you'd feed the frame parts.
It had a high fence all around.
That worker managed to damage a sensor.
Tried to fix it himself.
Got a co worker to hold down the button and managed to get behind the light barrier with a ladder....
All of that just to fix a 20$ sensor he broke...
Losing both legs in the process.
The line stated by Police “Injuries incompatible with life!” will always stick in my mind.
it's the definition used by ambulance and police to declare someone deceased without a doctor present
I never returned after years before, I smacked my face into the back of the seat in front of me on the log ride. I didn’t realise I had blood running down my face until later. To exit the ride you walk past people waiting in the queue, and the people up front all gave me horrified looks because they saw the blood on my face before I even knew. All that the staff were interested in was rushing me past that queue. Nobody ever checked on me or asked if I was ok.
"In house developed"
First thing that came to mind when I heard that was the Verruckt water slide.
Yeah, that term always worries me!
Disney develops all it's attractions in house and has done for 50 years since they split with Arrow
And so do most theme park operators these days
@@lordcaptainvonthrust3rd disney has extremely knowledgeable designers and developers now. Sure, the Matterhorn and Expedition had their flaws, but modern Disney rides run smoother than most out-of-house companies. The only problem is that even Disney ignores maintenance until the slow season
@@revairelum4871 Agreed 100%
The problem isn't who designed or built the ride
The problem is how any park allows the ride to be operated and/or maintains it thereafter 👍
my first thought was action park
Holy shit that's incredible that the guy was able to step in to apply CPR while being in the other raft involved in the incident, calm under pressure for sure
When situations arise, you don't think of yourself; you do what you can do without thinking of what it is you have to do. Much respect for people who jump in and get things done, when they need to be done.
not all are snowflakes now. But it quickly changes.
Several people were given awards for their conduct in immediately responding.
Including one of the victims, Luke Dorsett, who managed to save his niece from falling out into the conveyor. The governor general awarded him a posthumous commendation for brave conduct.
Likely a current or former emergency responder
@@antontsaufr not everyone are scaredy cat rw’ers who just want to see people hurt (never met one that wants to help people) so its nice that empathetic people still exist in this world
I have to say I really enjoyed this style of editing. The same graphics we've all learnt to love but the transitions between them made everything just so much more better than before.
Dreamworld management of the 1980s also elected to engineer their own take of this ride, as opposed to buying a design already in use overseas. I'd wager this was where the trouble started.
From the other comments, this seems likely. All disasters are management disasters.
They did have the original slat placement, though. They apparently didn't have the knowledge to either prevent damage to the system or the reason why it existed in the first place. I suppose consulting experts about the risks was too costly.
While it had issues, it did seem to operate fairly normally during it's first years despite the under-preforming pumps. I'd say that the real problems started with refusal to update/upgrade any part of the system from the 1986 specs or do basic work on the ride is really what started this whole chain. If they had kept the original design they had, those nice people would have been laying on slats, not sucked into machinery.
As our understanding of these types of rides has evolved, I also feel it was partly the fault of the state for not requiring automatic shut offs or other safety features that most rides would have had by 2016.
A lot of people in Australia are still quite traumatised from this event. It really did shock the whole country when it happened.
It still chills me to think about 😢 such a tragic preventable horror story
by "a lot of people in Australia are still quite traumatised from this event." i think you mean there are still some people who were involved hands on and some family members who are still traumatised..while the vast majority of Australians..lets say 99.9999999999% of them saw it on the news, thought, thats interesting/shocking and moved on quite rapidly.
It didn't shock the whole country when it happened..it was a days headline and a leading news story for a 24 hour cycle -
@@JC-zv3cvNo. Imagine a mass shooting in Disneyland by a disgruntled worker, who then mutilated the bodies.
This was a common point in many Australian childhoods. Myself and most of my friends rode this ride many times. I have a photo of me as a child in this ride.
Traumatised might be a bit too strong, but it wasn’t part of the news cycle. Dreamworld attendances nosedived. It was a place whose selling point was happy whimsical memories. It’s similar to the challenger disaster, not quite as bad as 9/11.
@@JC-zv3cvnah they are
@@JC-zv3cv99.9999999999% leaves only 0.000025 of a person left.
You have covered this more accurately and informatively than any UA-cam video I’ve seen on this incident. Thank you for being the person who reads the actual reports on the topics you cover, the quality and understanding you bring is noticeable.
This accident was so heartbreaking - like many other locals (and probably other commenters will have the same experience) I went on this ride from a young age. There's probably photos of me on it somehwere.
The splashes from the rapids made it cool on hot days. It was nice to sit down after a day walking around in the park. It was the safe ride, the ride you could fill up the raft with your entire group of family or friends. The accident was shocking so to many of us who grew up on this ride and shattered our feelings of safety and familiarity towards it.
I also had an incident on the nearby Mine ride once, the seatbelt slipped off my shoulder as I jolted around a corner that looked over the river rapids. Thankfully the cart was small and it was a tight fit with someone packed in next to you.
I didn't ever go to Dreamworld (but my wife and kids on that ride a few times); I had a lot of the same feelings about the Ghost Train in Sydney's Luna Park, which I'd been on a few days before and passed (on a train) on the night of the fire.
It was horrible, I've been to dream world twice in my life. Last was a out 4 years ago. Sadly you can guess when the first time I went.
I won't go into much detail, my brain has tried its best to repress as much of that day as it can, it wasn't pleasant nor would my comment stay up for long if I did go into detail, and lastly and by far most importantly is, out of respect for the lives lost and their loved ones.
What I will share was I was in line, far enough back that I got to see more than I'd have ever liked, it destroyed the life of some of the people there.
But I will say it became chaos. Some people tried to help, some tried running, I vaguely remember running towards the accident, but I mostly remember the sounds, remember hearing some screaming, but I genuinely couldn't tell you where the screams came from.
My heart really goes out to 4 lives lost, their families, the workers, and the emergency services that saw more than anyone should of.
I will say seeing the photo of the accident drained my blood and has me in a bit of a daze when writing this.
Make sure you are checking in on yourself today. Touch base with family and friends, keep them in the loop. Trauma triggers can come out of nowhere and PTSD basically means your body remembers whatever the traumatic incident was, so you can get the same or similar physiological responses the body experienced during it. Having both been through a few traumatic incidents in my life and seeing clients as a mental health therapist, those feelings can take you back to that day.
If you have a therapist, I highly encourage you to reach out to them, even if by text email or secure messaging, just to keep them in the loop.
I'm sorry you had to experience such a horrific tragedy and I hope that time has helped to close those wounds, even if they have left a scar or two.
God bless you; take care of yourself.
please... for your sake, see a therapist. witnessing that kind of trauma is horrific, especially so when its unexpected (ie not a war zone)
I've been in a few accidents, even saw a friend of mine get killed, and I want to share and be supportive, but I'll delete my comment if I'm out of line. Instead of talking about that death, I'll share a story of survival.
Some years ago, I was operating a Crown monolift narrow aisle high reach truck, a 12,000lb (5,400kg) forklift designed to lift 40+ ft (13m) in the air. I had to grab a pallet of frozen food from the reserve rack to replenish a case pick location for the selectors. It was busy season, I was working long hours, fatigued and frustrated. Pallets of outbound product were staged on the floor of the aisle, in my way. I decided to shove it with the bumper of my power unit, instead of doing a 180° turn and moving it with my forks.
The top left hand corner of the pallet snagged a vertical support beam of the reserve rack, and it twisted like a Rubik's cube. The top half of the pallet intruded into my driver compartment, struck me on the left shoulder, twisted my body, and pinned my right arm against the throttle.
Every joint in my back cracked, making a sound like a zipper. All the air was crushed out of my lungs in one involuntary gasp. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe. The motor at max torque, crushing me to death against 12,000 pounds of hilo and an immovable object. My rational thoughts were slowly drowned out by the pounding of my heart and screaming in my mind. "Please, I don't want to die! It hurts! Please, god, help me, I'm so afraid, I don't want to die alone!"
I could see stars, my vision tunneled, and there was serenity. The pain went away. I was ready. I was ready to die. Then, the machine stopped. I heard the motor contactor click off and the lift released pressure. Adrenaline rushed and I clawed my way out of the driver compartment, taking huge breaths that made my ears pop. Air never tasted so good.
I never reported it, just collected myself and went back to work. Smoked a few extra cigarettes that night, for sure.
Five lives ultimately lost as the husband of one of the victims killed himself by drowning in a river near Canberra a couple of years after this tragedy . He couldn’t bear living any more and left two kids orphans.
A pretty key difference with this ride (vs other ones in operation elsewhere in the world) is the "homebrew" aspect of things. If you go to a rapids ride at, say, Six Flags, it's going to be an Intamin or similar. And as they're a ride made by an established manufacturer, it comes with integrated PLC controls, safeties, etc. In fact, modern versions are so sensitive they practically shut down if you sneeze too hard.
This ride, with its separated motor systems, with separated controls, was literally a disaster waiting to happen; it just took almost 40 years. The way it was "maintained" (e.g. lack thereof) just amplified the damage, and essentially guaranteed the loss of life when the inevitable finally happened.
Having been on this ride in my teens in the 2000's. It was the least suspecting ride for a potential tragedy.
@@froz1983 yes and considering the tower of terror was always breaking down amongst other roller coasters. There was always at least one ride closed.
If a park has constant ride shutdowns that's your clue that the entire park is unsafe.
It was always obvious.
ummmm... I was there in 2015. Cant say it looked very safe just by general design. Uncontrolled rafts floating down the stream with general public including small children, loaded (!!!) rafts lifting by machinery, huge water pumps right next to public walkways. Not a single thought "what happens if...".
Then, when it crashed, more precise details exposed like no automatic interlocking and operators who cant even press the button, but it was the last slices of Swiss cheese.
I went on it in 98, it was pretty wild that time and I wondered if anyone had been hurt on it.
I've been on that ride so many times, that day put the hooks in me and a lot of my fellow Queenslanders.
The first thought was for those poor people and their families. The second thought was “that could have been us”. The third was that the theme parks would never be the same.
@@stephaniesmith4616 Agreed. I've sworn off all theme park rides since this. It is just not worth it for me.
Yeap, me and my daughter rode it for years, my heart sank on hearing
As a Gold Coast kid I’ve been to Dreamworld through the 90s countless times: it really was the best theme park of the 4 we have here in GC. River Rapids was one of my favourite rides along with the Gold Rush and Wipeout. I’ve ridden them countless times; and never in my life would I have thought a tragedy of this scenario would occur. Much appreciation and respect for all who responded and aided that day, and my deepest condolences to the families who were affected by this loss. It really shocked the nation when this happened and due to the severity of the incident I think a lot of us were not only troubled that it occurred in the first place, but also truly grieved for those who lost their lives and those who had to witness such a tragedy in person.
Every single time I rode a Dreamworld ride I felt lucky to have survived. They were always this dodgy.
@@whatilearnttoday5295 That's just part of the thrill!
I remember when that Big Brother show became an "attraction" at Dreamworld.
Memories.
This incident was massive for Australia WHS it was the first case considered for industrial manslaughter. The report and investigation were read by most people in the safety field regardless of industry. It was a real learning moment. Major history point for Australian industrial safety.
I worked at a theme park in the area at the time. It was SCARY. There’s been a few things like that on the Gold Coast that becomes the big talk of the town.
We had to do so much extra safety training after.
As a first aid officer at close by theme park that day I will never forget the hopelessness and horror hearing that unfold that day. Now as a paramedic, I still haven't seen anything as bad as what happened that day...
On your card i’d even argue for “easily preventable” because there were many factors that could have prevented this. If the infrastructure (pumps, or electrics running he pumps) were more robust, the pumps wouldn’t have tripped, if there was a level sensor that automatically stopped everything should the water level get to low, or even simply having the operator being told “hey, if things go very wrong, hit this big red button.” It’s another perfect example of the “Swiss Cheese Model” where just those little things align just right for a disaster. My heart still goes out for those families as they have been changed forever due to this incident
There were lots of stop buttons all over the place (they was spaced close to each other just in case someone fell in water low ), it’s so poor that extreme basic brain power of a human didn’t know how to press them,second was lack of failsafe when water level is low and when pump failure has happened and only enough pumps to fill the water up , really they should’ve had double the amount of pumps that were operating at 40% capacity each so one pump failure isn’t a problem (1 pump failure or not pumping fast enough was enough to shut the ride down assuming the operators noticed it and knew how to hit the big red button) and other one was landing zone off the ramp had that big gap (if the gap was not there, it would’ve just simply have pushed the two boats further along the rail
But the ride was really old, so I’m guessing the pump thing was a bit harder to work out, but the safety system is definitely not You can use a stick with a float on the end with a switch that’s connected to the stop circuit (as a package £50 to 500 for bunch of them to be installed in different locations probably by there own on site engineers)
@@leexgx The inquest found that designing, installing, and testing an automatic low-water-level shutdown for the conveyor would likely have cost 2000-3000 AUD (1120-1680 GBP) (nominal 2016 figures not inflation adjusted). This assumes it would have been done as part of a conveyor control upgrade early that year (which included some automatic shutdowns, for the events of chain breakage or a raft getting stuck at the conveyor entrance).
I very much doubt it would have been practical to achieve redundancy by installing even one additional pump. These pumps were fairly large, each about 360 kW (about 450 horsepower) with maximum flow of 4000 l/s, and had variable speed drive. I haven't been able to find consistent figures on cost, but it would clearly be many times more costly than a low-water-level shutdown.
Thanks for the reminders. Stuff happens, Sometimes stuff doesnt happen. We need to pay attention.
Thank you
This was horrible, the news travelled so fast despite the terrible details being withheld. You just knew it was a gruesome and tragic death for the four 😢
How was the training allowed to be so subpar that the operators didn't know what the E-Stop buttons were for? And the water level - all that would require is some simple float switches wired so that the conveyor system would stop until reset by an operator if a low-level float switch in the circuit was opened. They could have made this ride much safer for not a huge amount of money if they had cared at all.
I remember going to dreamworld as a child in the 80s and I would consider one of the best theme parks in that era. But coming into the 2000s, dreamworld faced serious competition from Warner brothers movie world which ate badly into their business.
It got so bad that dreamworld was basically a relic of the 80s and 90a and cut corners everywhere. That plus being owned by a parent company meant needing to satisfy shareholders and we all know where that ends
Float switches are fine until they fail and no one knew what they were there for in the first place.
Trained and competent staff are the only real way to keep things safe.
@wilsjane Nobody but the maintenance personnel in charge of inspecting them during scheduled downtime would need to know how they work or why they're there. If them failing closed is a concern, you could use two sets of floats beside each other (so they're reading the water level at the same point) in order to have redundancy. I see what you're saying about ensuring that training is up to a certain level, and that definitely important, but the goal when designing any system where human input is required is to engineer safeguards into the system which prevent the mistakes which human beings often make from causing a catastrophic failure - hence the need for things like the float switches and other sensors. For example, few people today would be comfortable flying with an airline whose planes had no modern safety systems installed (Stall warning, terrain warning, traffic warning, etc) designed into them. Something like an amusement park ride, where there's a potential for injury or death, shouldn't be any different.
They plead guilty, and one of the reasons would have been lack of training. They probably didn’t have a training program and didn’t record who had completed the training. More reliable than float switches would be something to identify if the pumps were working.
@@blackbird_actual Sadly, as recent history has shown, having planes with safety overrides without pilots who both understand them and know how to turn them off has killed more than 300 people, Boeing 737-MAX.
Likewise, having safety equipment on a fairground ride is a very dangerous situation without staff who understand it, unless the engineer is onsite all the time.
I am the retired chief engineer of a major company, and while not everyone could maintain or repair faults they knew how to shut equipment down.
I also had a duty engineer onsite whenever we were open to the public.
PS, No one has ever been killed in a UK theatre or cinema. But without correct engineering practice it certainly would have happened. A dropping safety curtain weighs around 3 tons.
I saw this notif and immediately clicked. I live nearby this place and have visited it since childhood (honestly wanna go visit it again during summer) but im surprised i didnt know about this!
same here, seen the news when i was on lunch break, so tragic. i wander how the kids that survived this event, i hope all but the best
I am surprised too. It was gigantic news, for months here in Brisbane (and probably all Australia). I guess it's strange how some things can disappear under our radar
What I will never understand, is how no one bats an eye when authorities come along after a tragedy and blame the owners of the ride for the problems and fine them, etc. But no one in authority that should’ve had inspection plans, certification requirements, and the authority to stop the tragedy before it even happened ever seem to get any blame. If this ride was in as poor of condition as people have reported, and if the safety mechanisms and procedures were as deficient as the report stated, why were there no inspections no certification required nothing that would’ve stopped the tragedy due to these deficiencies?
Its Queensland, they’re (I’m not including myself in that, I’m a blow-in) still stuck in the 1950s in pretty much every respect.
Sadly to many people live in a world of "Close the stable door after the horse has bolted" mentality.
As a business owner, its your responsibility to understand health and safety law and to follow it. Yes, inspections are important but that doesn't take the blame away from the owners. If you don't know how to make a thing safe, you have no right trying to make money out of it.
@ I never suggested that the blame be taken away from the owners my point is that the blame that should be levied at authorities is all too often ignored. All the media coverage and the investigation report that was mentioned in this piece focused entirely on the park and mentioned nothing about the authorities entirely neglecting their responsibility to protect the public.
Basically the onus for health and safety (as defined in Queensland law) is on the "person conducting a business or undertaking" to ensure that they are working safely. The health and safety inspectors are not theme park engineers, they are not trained to be theme park engineers. The assumption is that if you want to run a theme park, then that's on you. Health and safety inspections basically are just to confirm that you have a safe system of work in place, not that it's suitable or adequate or takes into consideration every possible risk, as the business operator is going to understand that better than anyone else (assumingly).
I remember this like it was yesterday. I heard about it at work and was horrified to read the details. When I arrived home my 16 year old daughter was in tears saying “those poor people!” Lifelong emotional scars for all those involved in this tragedy
I’ll never forget when this happened. My heart still goes out to their families and loved ones, the Aussie theme park scene has really never been the same since
I used to work at Six Flags St Louis and the year I worked at Thunder River, they made sure to hammer in the lessons that this tragedy taught.
For example, in the event of an overturned boat or a person in the water, immediately E-stop the ride. It'll cut all power to the ride
yeah, its sad that at the least, this wasn't the number ONE priority to know by these operators.....who I'm sure, if they did, they would have stopped the ride before this tragedy unfolded.....
absolutely right and obvious idea. Something goes wrong - press Big Red Button, then start to do anything. I cant even imagine how dumb needs to be to not do it without special extensive training.
This has been the most consistent Chanel on UA-cam. Never changed because the recipie was already perfect 👍🏽 good as always
Yep, I like that the animations have stayed the same over the years!
I don't understand why companies don't do an emergency stop drills on equipment like this at regular intervals. It sounds like it would be something fun and exciting for the operators, which would make it more memorable and more likely for them to get it right in the event of an actual emergency. Drills also let you discover flaws in your procedures or a breakdown in machinery, before an actual emergency.
Every morning you include an E-stop procedure. That’s what we did at another park in the area. It’s SUPER important that you know how to operate these amusement devices. There heavy machines
you should put on your bingo card cost cutting as they did not fully train the operators likely due to cost an time needed
That's alarmingly close to being a free space, though.
Especially if you throw out a bit of realism - With literally infinite budget to hire engineers to think through and design around every possible event for every modification almost every accident could be prevented.
But, as an engineer, I feel confident in saying nothing would ever actually get built if you let us go at optimizing safety with no constraints.
what to train? If something happens - hit the Red Button, here, here or there? It requires month-long course?
@@antontsau It requires them to be told about it . . . that does take time and planning. Did the people running the thing even know what systems that button would shut down?
And really that button should have been interlocked to the pumps. The fact it wasn't was a cost cutting measure during design and install.
@squee222 and also not to forget to train them to push a spoon into the mouth, not to ear. Kindergarten.
Yes of course. Electrical design there was really terrible.
I am a Queenslander, and rode that ride many times... one time a friend dared me to jump overboard... I'm glad I didn't give in to peer pressure.
I would've included "cost cutting" as it sounds like thet needed more staff at that ride
Not to mention better repairs, rather than the cheap half-assery that they did!
Agreed. Companies are far more interested in profits, bonuses, and stock prices than they are safety.
Yes, yes, everything's better with more money.
For the most part it was a lack of a automated fail safe system that basically turned off the conveyor system when the water got too low which is probably a £50 item even the 1950s they probably would’ve just used a float switch connected to the stop circuit Which would cost less than £10 to prevent this disaster (the other issue was was the rail being so far away from the conveyor if the rail was all the way up to the conveyor they just simply would’ve bumped each other and pushed it slightly further along)
The stupid thing is it had happened I believe a couple of years prior to this and they still did not implement any fail safe instead they fired the person for not pressing the stop button and still didn’t implement a fail safe system
Stuff like this makes an instrumentation tech seethe. A $5 sump pump float switch tied into the conveyor control circuit could have prevented this. Or extend the support rails an extra 2'. Or even simpler still, a single piece of wire could have tied the pump trip into the conveyor control. Such small change could have saved lives.
I’ve been on that ride several times as a kid and ended up taking my kid on it, and have photos from being on it. So much fun and a highlight of Dreamworld visits. Absolutely horrific what happened. We were devastated.
Oh man, the second I saw the title I knew this was going to be a good one. It's been living rent free in my brain for years.
I dont remember if I was living on the Gold Coast or still home in Brisbane (under an hour away) at the time of this event happening but it was a significant event throught the region for a long time.
I would later meet one of the first Police Officers on the scene of the ride tragedy, and this still haunts him today.
The event was also investigated by Worksafe Queensland, the body for policing Workplace Health and Safety laws in Qld, from very shortly after the incident, if not straightaway.
Greed ALWAYS trumps safety.
Sad. None of them knew which button to stop the ride, none were even trained to recognise a situation where a stop would save a life. It didn't auto stop when water drops below a certain level, mechanism that would cost very little. Hard to believe four people's lives can only be worth 3 million dollars in fines. I guess the media made sure trust in the park was gone at least.
Agree. A very light penalty. I was mad the CEOs didn’t receive justice for their failures.
John, I think you should have included Cost Cutting in your BINGO card. Had the pumps and conveyor gears been designed, constructed and the system built for the specific purpose of maintaining the correct water flow and supply as well as running the conveyor, the mechanism wouldn’t have needed slats removed to reduce stress on that portion of the system. As soon you said the owner used “off the shelf” parts like pumps as well as the design-specific built mechanisms, I knew that would be a factor.
At this point no one should ever be designing amusement park rides of any kind that can be Frankenstein-ed together with any parts that can be bought at a DIY store. The bolts may be standard sized, but I doubt DIY stores are carrying bolts of a strong and resilient enough material for amusement park rides. A water pump system likely used for moving/delivering water on a farm is not meant for dealing with an amusement park ride. A water pump losing pressure to an irrigation system is not the same red flag as water pump losing pressure on a “rushing rapids” ride where maintaining water levels is life threatening.
I worked with the naval architect who was responsible for trying to recreate the accident with weighted dummies and rafts with the same displacement and trim. They (the cops and engineers) really struggled to get the flip to happen.
It speaks volumes to how big those things were that it was a naval architect who had to be brought in.
@biggiouschinnus7489 they are big, but it wasn't really about size, it was more about trying to exactly recreate accident, they needed someone with the technical knowledge to accurately model what happened. Those rafts were incredibly stable, it took a lot of things going wrong in the exact right way to cause the accident as it occurred resulting in loss of life.
But did it?
@montyshark3993 Flip? No they caused a near accident but never a perfect recreation of the accident
3rd time reading similar comment, does this cement what dream-world stated, that people were playing up in rafts?
Our state fairgrounds had one of these rides. It was very popular for years as August weather in my state has been referred to as "hell's front porch". The ride has been completely removed now. I wonder how many places preemptively got rid of those rides based on tragedies elsewhere.
You should do the Australian 3801 stream train accident in 1990.
Love all your work!
I was so psyched to see this pop up in my recommendations today, I’ve been hoping you’d do a video on this for a long time!
The SeaWorld helicopter accident could be a good follow up to this video. I went there in 2019 and even saw one of the helicopters involved in the accident, though I didn’t know it at the time.
Makes you shiver, We have been on the Thunder Rapids ride many times. And of course we did the Seawold Helicopter ride.. Brrrrrrr Chills me to hear about these deaths. My thoughts go to the familys and loved ones. PW. Australia.
I'm consistently amazed at so many bad decisions made around the world that don't even meet basic Engineering 101 principles. Engineers aren't hard to find -- we're here and there's good reason to listen to us.
Yeah especially nowadays
All emergency stops SHALL be tested daily before ride/equipment placed in-service. Atleast they would have known they work and location reminder. It's a bloody no brainer!
Thank you! Happy Holidays to you and your family, John! (You're stepping on my foot)
Just gonna keep on running ot until it fails completely. I love this style of maintenance management.
It's nuts that Dreamworld have just opened a brand new themed section called River Town.
I visited Dreamworld in the mid 80s - I think it was before the River Rapids ride was installed - it was a great venue - the roller coaster was awesome. as was the Imax screen. its a pity that things went wrong.
I was shocked to find out there have been several thunder river accidents. its always been my favorite ride because it always seems so benign but still fun. just serves as a reminder that there is no such thing as "benign" rides. all have potential for danger especially if neglect is involved.
I live about 15 minutes drive from Dreamworld and rode this ride many times before the tragedy. The machinery always concerned me on this ride. Riders travelled straight across the top of the exposed gears, slats and chains which drove the rafts across the conveyor. Other parts of the loading area, not shown in this video, also used large wheels to propel the rafts from below; these wheels could have been installed to push the rafts from the sides to reduce the risk of anyone falling into the wheel wells.
Australia has very strict laws for carnival rides. Under Australian laws, the removal or modification of machinery parts such as the conveyor slats must be signed off by a qualified engineer and the ride must be recertified. I don't know if this ever happened. Dreamworld had been struggling financially at the time and the park had been starting to show its age with many pathways, rides and attractions starting to show wear and tear.
Interlocks could have been fitted to shut down the conveyor automatically if water levels dropped below the critical level, but none were ever installed. The loading area of the ride always worried me slightly and seemed an unnecessarily dangerous arrangement, especially considering the strictness of Australian workplace and carnival ride laws.
A couple of notes:
The mine cart ride, an indoor mini rollercoaster, was closed down about the mid to late 1990s due to mounting maintenance costs. The fibreglass mountain it was in was converted to a storage area for the park,
The two survivors from the raft were the young children of adults who died in the tragedy.
Coomera is pronounced "COOM-era", not "coo-MER-a".
I was there at the opening of Dreamworld, $20 per person back then. It was a place that Australia had never experienced before. When the accident happened, no one could understand how it came about. It was horrifying and we thought Dreamworld would stay closed forever. I was thinking about going to Dreamworld on that day with my kids but changed my mind thank god. It was very shocking, I think the whole of Australia was rattled by it. My brother in law was in charge of the digital photos and he needed some counselling. Thanks for showing me what happened in pictures. And for the brief origins of the park.
My daughter and i rode that ride heaps of times, when not being fatal it was light-hearted fun. Between 2010 and 2014 (I bought us annual tickets to Dreamworld) The news affected lots of people as most people in our area have gone once. Seen lots of comments from Queenslanders, remember how my heart sank when I heard of this disaster
the best part about this was that it was a known issue that had been there so long that basically everyone who has ever ridden it is familiar with the service operator having to come and get u unstuck at the bend where it happened
This was on the news constantly for weeks as information slowly came out. My family had the news on every night back then, and everyone was desperate for information. In the first few days it was (incorrectly) reported that most the dead were from my town and I dreaded that it'd be someone I know, or an acquaintance thereof.
Even the disaster videos I've seen since haven't given the level of detail of the deaths given in the news in those weeks following the accident. It doesn't bear repeating. I feel sick remembering it, and I can only hope those actually involved or who witnessed the accident can find some peace.
Absolutely horrific, absolutely preventable.
I remember going on the log ride as a kid, it was my absolute favourite. So weird to see that space empty now.
The ride needed a backup pump for each pump one goes down the other kicks on.
Whenever you have board members that favor stockholders you're screwed.
Someone/s on that board should be doing time for their his/her negligence…legal system got them off with spreading the blame to inanimate things to cloud the real cause . People make the decisions not objects .Safety should be one of their major concerns and is surely their job and responsibility…their actions/inactions led directly to this horrific outcome and they should have been punished as such . They had many opportunities from past equipment failure to act and didn’t address them …this was so avoidable …
Thank for these videos. I appreciate the research you make and how you cover different disasters no matter how big or small, new or old it was. 🙏
Since the company was publicly traded, I think its probably safe to check off "cost cutting" since it was almost certainly a contributing factor as to why proper fixes weren't made. So many disasters happen because quaterly or annual budgets take precedence over safety in many public companies.
Because they didn’t want to install a £10 safety float switch to automatically stop the water and conveyer (it probably a lot more for being installed and stuff, but it wouldn’t be more than £500) it cost them at least £300 million (between stock losses was the biggest one , destroying the ride and the one next to it that also got condemned, the park being closed, paying out all the families and the silly small £3 million fine)
as someone in Queensland... this hits close to home X_X
Also Coomera is pronounced "Coom-ra" :3
Actually I've always heard it pronounced "Coom-eh-ra". Long time Brisbane resident.
@@andrewduffin9216 yeah, fair cop too... :)
just... Coo-meh-rah was a new one for me :P
Coom-ra sounds like a character from Thundercats
Twinsies :3
The sound between the m and r sounds is a schwa which is probably why we're struggling to transcribe it
On 3 July, 2021 an accident on the Raging River took the life of 11 year old Michael Jaramillo. The ride was at Adventureland Park in Altoona, IA. His raft was similar to the one shown in this video. He and his family boarded the raft and noted that one of the air bladders was low. It had caused the raft to take on extra water. The ride attendants boarded them on the lopsided raft and sent them down the chute. During the turbulent ride, the deflated area of the raft took on more water until the whole raft flipped upside down. Young Michael was trapped underneath, and couldn't be freed in time to save his life. The park closed the ride and never reopened it. The owners of the park at the time of the accident sold the park to another investor.
the theme park is still trying to recover today their line up and safety standards are so much better now the even opened so many new rides but still don’t have the same crowds as the other parks on the gold oast
I'd add "cost cutting" as training does cost money - lack of training however costs lives.
Don’t understand how cost cutting could be a factor in a place like this that turns over millions ….wonder what they pay the ceo /management
I had been on the ride many times over the years, and remember it fondly from the time when it first opened (and was quite reliable). I remember thinking after riding it after a significant number of slats had been removed, "This is an accident waiting to happen", as the ride had never had any harnesses to keep people inside the raft.
I was shocked to hear the news when it broke about fatalities on the ride, as I had been on that ride only a few months prior.
To not have any automatic safety equipment installed was unbelievable, particularly as the ride had been operating for some 30 years and everything wears over time.
My unforgettable experience on one of these rides was at Six Flags San Antonio. A water moccasin swam up and slithered right into our raft! Luckily no one got bitten, but my god it was terrifying.
The original turntable to get on the ride was an injury waiting to happen as you used to walk from a fixed object onto a rotating turntable to enter the boats. I'm not sure how many elderly or people with walking difficulties may have fallen but even to me as a fit person this ride was a challenge from day 1 that later benefitted from a concrete fixed platfowm replacing the origina woodenl turntable.
All I can say is good about this tragedy is thank god the kids got out. Those adults really pushed themselves in their final moments to get those kids off safe. Despite the horrible circumstances all I can hope is they knew the children were safe before they went.
I grew up in banyo, catching the train to the Gold Coast while skipping school to sneak into dream-world through the fence next to the Big Brother house, going on the giant drop, rapids, I was there the day the cyclone was opened up, shame it's a shit hole now 😊
John, could you please add to your list the Battersea Park funfair big dipper disaster. I had a relative that rode on it earlier that day it happened. Thanks John and have a great holidays and seasons greets....
Thanks!
Thank you
The bingo card may have needed cost cutting marked. At the inquest cost cutting in ride maintenance, engineering, understaffing and staff training was noted as a factor
Thanks for covering this one. It was devastating! I still haven’t been to Dreamworld, but it’s been on my list for years! Still trying to decide if I want to go now. We usually end up at Movieworld.
Windy and rainy in the UK. I got the info i wanted, thanks! (I really do wait around for that weather update - every time).
It's windy and cold. (Fareham, Hampshire UK). Reported live, via bedroom window. Next to lee-on-the-solent.
😅
We had snow here yesterday in York, Pennsylvania, USA 🇺🇸. Luckily, none of it stuck to the roads and the drive home was easy. It’s sunny today but only 32 degrees Fahrenheit (freezing). Brr 🥶
It's been bloody windy and cold in the UK for days. Give it a rest, mother nature!!
This was terrible,Knowing how preventable this was with the inclusion of a simple emergency stop button,if the slats weren't removed, nobody would have fallen through and died.And if the pumps were fixed and replaced this would not have happened at all.
This disaster was actually the first major loss of life at an Australian theme park in modern history, after the 1979 ghost train fire at Sydney’s lunar park.
Practically all Australians at some point end up visiting the gold coasts parks, so almost everyone here born after 1986 has likely been on the ride, including myself.
I think the impact of this disaster (socially) was very large due to this. Most people felt bad for the park and its workers, and of course for the poor victims who tragically lost their lives. It was a very sobering reminder of the dangers of complicity, becuase most people don’t really imagine that of all the rides that would take multiple lives, it would be the most low intensity, mundane and boring ride. Usually these types of child and toddler friendly rides are not the ones you see deaths on around the world.
I used to work at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. While the Walt Disney Company has certainly been slacking on ride maintenance and upkeep in recent years, they do have the gold standard in Cast Member training. I had four days of training before I could start my job as a retail Cast Member--and a friend who worked on the Finding Nemo Submarines had nearly two weeks of training! 😊
With all those Disney references in the first couple of minutes, you can tell that it's going to be a Mickey Mouse operation...
Really appreciate the animation. Watched another explanation of what happened but was confused, yours cleared up my confusion thank you!
I love theme parks but I hate those type of rides, they’re so unpredictable, banging into the walls, never know which way they’ll spin, some people trying to rock it on purpose, get wet, at least with roller coasters you’re strapped in and the only thing stupid people can do is raise their hands while the bar digs in their stomach
Gosh it feels like it happened so much longer ago than 2016.
Used to ride thunder river rapids heaps when I was younger, was pretty scary that such a "tame" ride could go so wrong.
Was on that ride a few days before this happened. Sad.
I visited the gulf coast, USA, not long before Katrina hit. That fact always made me feel the impact of that disaster on a personal level that I know I don't really have a right feel because I wasn't there when it all went down. I've always wondered if this is a normal human reaction or if I'm just a weirdo? So, I'm curious if you had a similar experience with your 'near miss'? -- Very glad you weren't a victim, by the way.
@@ejtappan1802 Can't say it impacted me on such a level, it was more of a reminder not to take life for granted, you never know what is around the corner. I think if I had have taken the ride on the same day it would have been a different story. Was a very popular ride, so many people really had a near miss on that day.
"And mr Music, can you do us a favor and play us out please"
John's line has changed... I wonder if Mr Music will soon say "No" when he asks for the video to end, so he had to start to ask in even more British ways.
Some trepidation watching this as I remember the horrible incident. Another incident happened on the Ghost Train at Luna Park in Sydney in 1979.
Oh yes. A saw a documentary on this and wow, how dodgy & corrupt it all was in the lead up to the incident.
Any time someone decides to build their own theme park, it's gonna end in tragedy
He liked Disney so much, he even copied their business practices...
Your animation just gets better every video! Please keep up your great work!
For a second there I thought you were covering the river rapids rides at Adventureland Iowa.
Water rides don't have an amazing track record...
Somehow being strapped into that thing looks dangerous to me... If it overturned somehow you'd be underwater trying to undo a belt... And if it overturns on the belt, well, we know what happens because of this.....
@@volvo09 my recollection of the dreamworld ride the belts were wide (2-3 inches?) blue velcro, not a bar or belt. Can't say how much differnece that would make in an emergency vs other types of restraints.
Yes, I thought this video was about that one too. Nope, just something more horrifying.