13 injuries after Paratrooper accident, London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3781741.stm

Just one thing after another this year.

A Skydiver?

The article doesn't describe what happened. Anyone know more?

No, I've looked on other news sites and the details are scarce. BBC will no doubt be updating that story as details become available. Pointless to speculate until then, just more of a heads up.

Yikes that is a scary accident. I enjoy those old Paratrooper rides, they have at ADVL in Iowa. Most of them have been around for nearly 30 years or more, so I imagine this ride over in London was falling apart and deterorating and not being maintained and inspected correctly. We'll see what the final report is. *** Edited 6/6/2004 8:06:23 PM UTC by Dan D McD***

That's scary. . . but details should come soon. Who knows. . . hope everybody's alright.

Oh yeah ,BTW. Tuesday, June 8th. . . My Chemical Romances releases "Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge". . . pick it up. . . it's awesome.

Since there were multiple injuries, it's safe to specualte that it wasn't one car that flew off. Sounds more like the center post may have collapsed or something that may have caused the ride to stop suddenly.

There is a British built version of the Paratrooper, built there by Lang Wheels (I believe). This is more than likely the provenence of this ride. What I can surmise is that, if it's a hydraulic version it suffered a failure of the ram (blown seals or hose) or if it's the non lifting version both of the support braces failed. I'm inclined to believe that the former is the case. I'd like to know more of what happened.

I've seen a blown hose on an Enterprise (while I was operating it). About the same number of folks went to the hospital (nothing serious though). I'll bet Dutchman hit it on the head.

Coheed, who are you and why do you keep plugging some crappy band? It's especially tasteless in a thread like this.

Here's a little more detail...(emphasis on little), along with some additional pics. Seems the "central support snapped in two."

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2004260921,00.html

Edit: Fixed HTML *** Edited 6/7/2004 9:02:24 PM UTC by Doug Rowe***

I agree with Den. Coheed, it is tasteless to Spam any forum, as den said, especially tasteless in a discussion of this nature.

*** Edited 6/7/2004 11:44:14 PM UTC by James K*** *** Edited 6/7/2004 11:44:48 PM UTC by James K***

This is the non lifting version, and it appears that the failure was around the hub area from what I can see.