{"id":76230,"date":"2017-06-26T06:26:58","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T10:26:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=76230"},"modified":"2017-06-26T06:28:10","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T10:28:10","slug":"n-video-shows-a-teen-falling-off-a-six-flags-ride-and-a-crowd-gathering-to-catch-her","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=76230","title":{"rendered":"Video shows a teen falling off a Six Flags ride \u2014 and a crowd gathering to catch her"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h5><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/e1b2c1e6-5a48-11e7-aa69-3964a7d55207\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>\nA 14-year-old girl dangled and fell from a ride at Six Flags Great Escape in Lake George, N.Y.<br \/>\non June 24. People underneath caught the girl. She did not suffer serious injuries.<br \/>\n(Crystal Nadareski)<\/h5>\n<p>By Amy B Wang<br \/>\nThe New York Times<\/p>\n<p>A teenage girl escaped serious injury Saturday evening after falling 25 feet from an amusement park ride in Upstate New York \u2014 and into the arms of a crowd that had gathered below to catch her.<\/p>\n<p>The dramatic fall and rescue was captured on video by at least one bystander at\u00a0Six Flags Great Escape in Lake George, N.Y., about 60 miles north of Albany, where the incident took place.<\/p>\n<p>In the video, a girl wearing blue shorts and a gray shirt can be seen dangling from a stopped gondola and screaming as\u00a0several onlookers shout in alarm. Another person is seated inside the two-person gondola, not in apparent danger of falling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was sitting there waiting and I heard the people screaming,\u201d\u00a0Loren Lent, who witnessed the incident, told The Washington Post. He said he had been standing nearby waiting to photograph his own family members, who were in a later gondola on the same ride.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he filmed a tense, life-threatening situation. A crowd began gathering beneath the dangling girl, their arms outstretched, as one person climbed into the tree to try to break off and move back branches, Lent said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat was a very good idea,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u00a0was just good to see people band together to do what they could do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/video\/c\/embed\/98f65f32-59e2-11e7-aa69-3964a7d55207\" width=\"480\" height=\"290\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>After several moments, Lent can be heard in the video yelling: \u201cThey\u2019ll catch you! They\u2019ll catch you, honey, go ahead!\u201d It was then that the girl plummeted to the ground, hitting a tree branch before being caught by several people below. The video showed onlookers cheering after the girl was caught and then the girl being carried away, limp.<\/p>\n<p>The girl who fell was a 14-year-old park guest visiting from Greenwood, Del.,\u00a0according to a statement from the Warren County Sheriff\u2019s Office. She was treated by park emergency medical\u00a0staff first, then taken to a local hospital and finally flown by helicopter to Albany Medical Center. She remains in stable condition with no serious injuries, police said.<\/p>\n<p>A 47-year-old man visiting the park from Schenectady, N.Y., was also taken to a local hospital for a back injury he suffered as he tried to catch the girl, police said.<\/p>\n<p>Lent, who later uploaded video of the incident to his Facebook page, said\u00a0it was \u201chorrifying\u201d to witness. He estimated the girl had been dangling for at least 90 seconds and possibly even a few minutes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere were a lot of people yelling and surprised as I was that there wasn\u2019t something that could be done faster to help,\u201d Lent said. He added he was also alarmed that the girl, after being caught, had to be carried about 30 feet to a waiting golf cart to receive medical attention.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf there\u2019s possibly neck or back trauma,\u00a0you want to immobilize (the person),\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Police described the \u201cSky Ride,\u201d the attraction from which the girl fell, as a \u201cvery slow-moving, gondola-style attraction that spans several hundred feet across the park.\u201d After receiving a call that a rider was in distress, park staff stopped the ride, police said.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s unclear how long the girl was dangling from the gondola. Investigators and park staff inspected the ride, including the gondola the girl had been in, and found that \u201ceverything was in proper working order and all safety equipment was intact and operational at the time of the incident,\u201d the sheriff\u2019s office said.<\/p>\n<p>Six Flags spokeswoman Rebecca Wood told The Post in an email that the New York State Department of Labor had cleared the ride for operation as of Sunday morning.<\/p>\n<p>However, \u201cout of an abundance of caution, the ride will remain closed while we conduct a thorough internal review,\u201d Wood said.<\/p>\n<p>When asked whether the girl\u2019s evacuation from the ride had followed protocol, Wood did not specify but said that all rides have a \u201cstandard evacuation plan.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"f0izdKgY4imdnq\" class=\"moat-trackable pb-f-theme-normal pb-f-dehydrate-false pb-2 pb-feature pb-layout-item pb-f-page-newsletter-inLine injected-by-front-end\" data-chain-name=\"no-name\" data-feature-name=\"no-name\" data-feature-id=\"page\/newsletter-inLine\" data-pb-fingerprint=\"0fDFtBwNlqj\"><\/div>\n<p>\u201cAs part of our annual practice an evacuation drill is conducted in partnership with local emergency personnel on this particular ride each spring,\u201d she wrote. \u201cEvery situation is unique and requires the appropriate time and tools for the evacuation.\u00a0 We are reviewing our internal procedures to ensure the safety and security of our guests and team members.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Accidents on amusement-park rides are rare: According to a 2016 report by the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iaapa.org\/intproject\/download\/2015RideIncidentSurveyReport.pdf\">National Safety Council<\/a> for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA), the chance of being seriously injured on a fixed-site ride at an amusement park in the United States is one in 16 million.<\/p>\n<p>Still, theme park ride-related accidents can be horrifying when they do occur, and more than 1,000 injuries on such rides have been logged each year between 2003 and 2015, according to the National Safety Council report. Those <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2014\/07\/08\/a-short-history-of-people-getting-injured-on-amusement-park-rides\/?utm_term=.e761d70c5920\">incidents have included<\/a> everything from a roller coaster launch cable snapping and hitting a 12-year-old boy at Knott\u2019s Berry Farm in California to a teenager whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2007\/US\/06\/21\/six.flags.accident\/\">feet were cut off after a cord wrapped around her ankles<\/a> in a free-fall ride at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iaapa.org\/safety-and-advocacy\/safety\/amusement-ride-safety\/amusement-ride-safety-tips\">IAAPA recommends safety tips<\/a>\u00a0for amusement rides, such as never boarding a ride impaired and \u201cnever forcing anyone, especially children, to ride attractions they don\u2019t want to ride.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>___<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2017\/06\/25\/video-shows-a-teen-falling-off-a-six-flags-ride-and-a-crowd-gathering-to-catch-her\/?utm_term=.69468d618a1d\">http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-nation\/wp\/2017\/06\/25\/video-shows-a-teen-falling-off-a-six-flags-ride-and-a-crowd-gathering-to-catch-her\/?utm_term=.69468d618a1d<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}