Painter at SFOG falls into icy pond.

Not much detail in the article. But the painter who was working on Ninja is in criticle condition.

Click here.

He has died.

http://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/index.html

Since that page changes every few hours:

"A man has died after an accident at Six Flags Over Georgia. Park officials say the contract worker was on a pontoon boat painting the underside of the "Ninja" roller coaster when a boat rail came loose. He fell into the water below. Emergency personnel were called, but officials say the man was under water for 25 minutes before he was brought out. He was unresponsive when he was taken to Grady Hospital. Monday night, Cobb County police confirmed the man did not survive. Authorities say another worker also fell into the water, but was not injured. (Updated 10:26p 2/13/06)"

edit: I need to learn to use correct tense

*** Edited 2/14/2006 7:18:32 AM UTC by Jophish***

Damn. :(

Poor guy, that really does suck.

Why is it they didn't just simply drain the pond/lake when they already had plans to repaint the ride?PKD is able to drain the lake as clearly evidenced by the construction pics for IJ:TC.

Because constructing a ride is kind of different than simply requiring access to the bottom of the ride to paint the track and supports. Draining an entre lake is a bit overkill when they can do the same exact job with a small boat, and we don't even know if they can drain that lake. Don't automatically assume that because one park can drain a lake means that every park can drain their lakes.

I'm curious as to what happened that didn't allow him to get back to the surface for air. Was he unconcious, or was he tied down by tools?

My thinking is that he was unconcious when he hit the water, which would explain why he didn't swim to the surface...

Sad day in any case... :(

I wondered the same thing... they said it was a shallow lake. I wonder what they consider shallow.

I originally thought that he was working alone, but if there were others there I'd like to know how it came to pass that he couldn't be brought up for a half an hour.

Once you hit water from that high up you're going to go into shock and not know what to do and you'll be in a stunned state. The surface tension of water is like concrete. Hitting it from so high has a good probability of breaking bones. That would be why he couldn't get to the surface. As for the save time, it took them 8 minutes to get him out as there was someone in the water on a boat that dived in an got him.