Park closed until further notice in France after 2 accidents!

The "prefet" (I guess you could say district attorney in the US?) where Parc St-Paul (a small fledging amusement park in France) is ordered the park closed until further notice!

What happened? On july 15th, on the brand new, barely 2 weeks in operation, PAX Wild Mouse, Formula 1, the brakes failed and the car slammed the others waiting on the brake run. 11 were lightly injured.

Today, july 17th, 4 people were badly injured when the CAR they were riding in fell during the loop on the "looping" attraction.

Looping is a powered coaster, really old as it toured the french fairs before coming to Parc St-Paul. Its a "Soquet" ride, same manufacturer as the old Quantum Loop at Seabreeze.

Yikes. That's not good.

Looping, incidentally, is arguably not a powered coaster. There is a motor on the train, but the electric rail only goes through the ascent and then half way through the loop. From that point on it coasts all the way back.

Anyone got any URLs for the story (even in French?) I've found some pictures on the first accident but nothing on the ordered closure.

http://info.france2.fr/france/12938919-fr.php

This is from a news station. There's a link to a video showing the park and the ride.

http://www.centralpark-fr.com/leforum/viewtopic.php?t=10526

If you go a bit down on that topic, "Tictac" posted an AFP news release detailing that starting thursday, the park is closed until management can prove that all attractions are safe.

Sad... but I think that means the end of the park!

EDIT: I just watched a France2 (TV channel in France) newsbit on the accident... This is the Edmonton Mindbender accident again! The front car of the train got off the tracks and slammed full speed into a support. *** Edited 8/17/2005 7:08:47 PM UTC by Absimilliard*** *** Edited 8/17/2005 7:12:17 PM UTC by Absimilliard***

Oh, that´s too bad. I always had this "morbid" fascination with Soquet coasters since they build that insane "ThreeLoop"-powered coaster. Something about them just looks strange. Especially the ride in question looks like a badly painted prop from a Tim Burton movie.

Check the link at rcdb:

http://www.rcdb.com/ig2387.htm?picture=5

(The pic before this shows the wheel-drive.)

Just look how close the riders heads get during the loop.

I hope the injured people will get well and the park can open again. The new Pax coaster just looks great (a sort of a wild mouse with outside-banked curves).

For a Soquet special with lots of pictures and movies check this thread:

http://freizeitparkweb.de/cgi-bin/dcf/dcboard.cgi?az=read_count&om=2150&forum=DCForumID39