Rescue Training of River Rapids Rides

I was watching the news tonight and I saw a story on how firefighters are training for flash flood rescues. But the neat thing was that they were using the Thunder River Ride at Six Flags St. Louis to train in. They had the water going and were doing drills and things there. I just sort of found that interesting.

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If practice makes perfect but noone is perfect, then why practice.

Similarly, the Prince George County (Maryland) Firefighters were conducting "High Angle Rescue Drills" on the Joker's Jinx coaster @ SFA yesterday. The rescue workers seemed really excited to do training in "real life environments". Also, this training could help the public be a little more comfortable that if "Things Go Bad" (TM), the park and the local authorities are prepared to address it.

lata, jeremy

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Dirtiest line uttered in 1964 flim: "How kind of you to let me come." Eliza Doolittle, "My Fair Lady"

Interestingly enough when SFA had a problem on Mind eraser back on opening weekend they didn't call for any outside emergency services.

All the park did was just send maintenance crews to the ride to help in evacuating the train which was stranded on the lift because someone's lap belt wasn't fastened.

us Batwing Fan...please tell me you _are_ joking about the need to call emergency services if a ride gets stuck on the lift hill......right???

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--George H
---Superman the ride...coming to a SF park near you soon...
Currency tracking experiment... http://www.wheresgeorge.com (Referring to The "George" on the $1 bill - Not Me)

It was an emergency situation,at least in my opinion it sure was because they made such a big deal about it & had to move everybody back away from the ride area & shutting down & evacutaing nearby rides in the process.

BATWING FAN-Parks have many ways that they can evacuate lifts without the assistance of outside services. I would say that it is only about 5-10% of the time that when a ride needs to be evacuated, they call outside services. They empty the cue line and surrounding rides because a) people standing around gawking are only in the way, and b) because if people catch a glimpse of something out of the ordinary going on they will most like likely come over and gawk and be in the way. If it had been beyond the park's control than you would have seen outside services.

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"Damn The Man! Save The Empire!"
-Mark, Empire Records
*** This post was edited by Mustang 5/8/2003 6:01:20 PM ***

Theme park mechanics are probably the best people to have around when trying to evacuate a ride in any situation. They are the experts. Most of the time the ride is evacuated by park personnel with out calling for outside services. I would have to say that the number is probably in the 99% range. The emergency services people turn to them for their expertise when it comes to ride evacuations. Most theme parks should open them selves up as a training ground for local emergency services. Lets think about it for a second, sure things can happen on a ride at the park so it is a good thing for them to know what to do. More importantly, where else do you have high structures to practice different techniques on without climbing on the same old water tower all the time, or repelling off of a building? I applaud the Six Flags parks for opening their locations to the emergency services in their area for this important training. I know that my local Six Flags park opens it’s doors for the emergency services to come in to drill. They have had the local Fire Departments in along with local and state police. The police were using the park as a sort of urban combat scenario. They just do not make a big deal about it.

No matter what business you are in it's helpful to tran with the local emergency services people. In industry, we do it all the time. The plant I work in even has a training center to teach emergency services people from all over the state how to deal with certain types of emergencies.