Snapping cables. Faulty restraint bars. Cars running off the track. Today's amusement parks
are chock-full of potential disaster, but does that stop us from chasing the
thrills? Stay tuned to learn all about the world’s deadliest roller coaster accidents.
The Big Dipper was the central attraction at London's Battersea Park for two decades,
before the wooden coaster took a tragic turn on May 30, 1972. When the rope hoisting one of
the trains broke loose, the carriage line was sent on a backwards free fall that the ride's
operator was unable to stop. The tail car came off the rails when it hit a turn in the track,
then smashed into the barrier, after which the two other cars attached
crashed on top of it. Five children were killed, and thirteen more were injured.
The operator's son, John Collins, explained the ride failure in a 1996 documentary:
"It was a combination of malfactions which shouldn’t have happened."
One girl, who was on the ride and witnessed the catastrophe unfolding,
described the gruesome accident:
"The first carriage had just reached the top, and then I think the cable broke,
I don't know, and it all came backwards very quickly."
The coaster was immediately dismantled,
and eventually the entire park closed altogether. Survivors of the incident say
they still experience mental distress as a result of the gruesome scene.
Perhaps the name "Big Dipper" should just be off-limits for roller coasters. This time,
the Dipper incident occurred in Omaha, Nebraska's Krug Park on July 24, 1930. A bolt loosened from
the coaster, sending four cars full of kids and teenagers plummeting to the ground. Four
people were killed, and 17 were injured by the crash. The ride was immediately closed.
The deadly incident also prompted the Omaha city council to immediately pass
an ordinance banning roller coasters in the park, leading to its inevitable
closure a decade later. The city did later allow the creation of Peony Park,
but that park also saw more than its fair share of fatalities, and eventually closed in 1994.
The indoor Mindbender coaster at West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada was
reportedly declared safe by an inspector just one day before its fatal breakdown on June 14,
1986. Due to missing wheel assembly bolts, the rear car came off its tracks in the midst of the
ride’s climax. People who witnessed the incident said the car was upside-down on the third loop
when the last cart lost it’s wheels and all four passengers in that cart were ejected.
The rollercoaster continued out of control before coming to a rest after rolling backward – with the
final wheelless cart jamming up against a pillar. The remaining passengers remained stuck on the
track for close to 30 minutes, while of the four ejected passengers, three were killed.
A man named Rod Chayko was in the last car and survived the incident, but with
devastating injuries. He had a broken pelvis, shoulder, ribs and legs, and a punctured lung.
"It was an accident. I have no hatred or ill will to the
West Edmonton Mall. They’ve treated me very well."
He later described the scene in ghastly detail, telling the Toronto Sun:
"We had gone up and were done [with] the big drop where we got our speed — we were getting ready to
go into the whirlee and our car started to fishtail. I grabbed onto the safety bar we
had back then and I held on, but the next time it went over, my lap bar was released. I flew."
The ride was redesigned, repainted, and re-opened months later. It still runs to this day.
On August 28, 1999, the Wild Wonder roller coaster in Ocean City, New Jersey endured
multiple mechanical failures, causing a car to lose traction and plummet 30 feet backwards
towards a sharp curve. A 39-year-old woman and her eight-year-old daughter were killed
after being ejected from their car due to the force of the turn. Two others were injured.
The drag chain of the ride releasing prematurely was the major cause of the gruesome accident.
However, the ride's safety features — including the pair's lap bar and the built-in anti-rollback
safety mechanisms — also failed to prevent it. One witness told the New York Times:
"I saw the car going up. Then something let loose and the car came slamming back downward,
slamming down. I saw two bodies fly, incredibly. It was a woman and a child.
The woman slammed into a beam. The child just flew. I knew right away they had to be dead."
The ride was immediately closed and removed from Gillian's Wonderland Pier,
although the park itself is still fully operational.
The Wildcat ride at Bell’s Amusement Park in Tulsa, Oklahoma turned into hellish chaos on April
20, 1997. One of the cars on the steel coaster disengaged from the tracks while ascending its
hill, causing it to careen backwards into another vehicle. A 14-year-old boy in the
front car was ejected, hit his head, and fell to his death. Six other passengers were injured.
One of the adult riders, whose nine-year-old daughter was among the injured, told Tulsa World:
"It was terrifying. There was nothing we could do
to prevent it. It shook my insides, it was so hard."
The ride was then dismantled and relocated to Jolly Roger Amusement Park in Ocean City,
Maryland, where it was rebranded as The Avalanche. It operated there from 2008 until 2014.
"Unleash the runaway mine trains of Big Thunder mountain. But every day… Big Thunder strikes!"
Disneyland is not immune to tragedy, despite the moniker “the happiest place on earth.” On
September 4, 2003, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad suffered a catastrophic accident, caused by
improper maintenance. The front locomotive car derailed and the front portion of the car dug
into the track. The rear portion landed on top of the leading passenger car, killing one 22-year-old
man and injuring 10 others. The young man's family sued the park, and settled for an undisclosed sum.
This was the second major incident involving the ride. In 1988,
a five-year-old boy's foot got trapped between the passenger
car and the platform. He had tried to exit during a brief stop near the end,
thinking the ride was over. All of his toes had to be amputated as a result of the awful injury.
Located at Marriott’s Great America Amusement Park in Santa Clara, California, Willard's Whizzer was
infamous for issues with its braking system. An utterly preventable accident occurred on March 29,
1980, when the steel spiral coaster's faulty mechanics sent one car crashing into another.
The cars then smashed into would-be passengers attempting to board the ride. A 13-year-old boy
fell, suffering fatal internal injuries to his chest and abdomen. Eight others were also hurt.
A park employee told local press that a combination of two failing systems
was responsible for the ride breakdown, including an electric safety mechanism
which was supposed to ensure adequate distance between cars. He remarked:
"The odds against that happening must be astronomical."
The ride was later modified and renamed, before closing in 1988.
The Treetop Twister at New Yorkshire's Lightwater Valley had only been in operation for a month when
it cost one British student her life. On June 21, 2001, several of the cars crashed
into one another, after a wiring mistake over-rode the emergency failsafe systems.
The victim's boyfriend, who was also injured by the accident,
described the moments leading up to the crash, telling The Telegraph:
"We noticed a car in front and [...] knew something was wrong.
We went halfway up a slope and hit the car and rebounded. We saw a car
behind us coming round the corner and we went backwards and hit it."
The 20-year-old woman, Gemma Savage, died after suffering severe head and spinal
injuries. Her family sued the park, but her death was ruled a misadventure rather than an
unlawful killing. No charges were brought against the ride's maintenance worker.
Despite its devastating beginning, the ride still remains in operation
under the abbreviated name Twister. It was the site of another dangerous flub,
when a worker started up the ride as a joke while another was doing checks on it. The
victim was thrown 13 meters into the air before another attendant stopped the cars.
"We begin with that breaking story:
a deadly fall from one of the tallest roller coasters in the world."
"Yeah, this is both scary and sad."
Six Flags Over Texas aimed to honor its state’s reputation when it refurbished
the Texas Giant into a 153-foot-tall behemoth in 2011. Two years later,
in July 2013, the massive coaster was the site of a gruesome disaster. A 52-year-old woman named
Rosa Esparza fell from her seat on the ride, dropping seven stories to her death. Her son,
who was with her at the time, reportedly screamed for the operators to halt the ride.
Her body was later discovered by authorities, nearly severed in half
on the roof of the ride's tunnel. After investigating the cause of the accident,
Six Flags ruled out mechanical failure. They did, however, add new security measures,
including re-designed restraints and a test seat for patrons to determine if they would fit in the
ride. They re-opened a few months later. Esparza's family sued the company and ultimately settled for
an undisclosed sum, agreeing that the park would not accept fault for the accident.
Even kiddie coasters have been known to turn deadly. A three-year-old boy named
Jayson Dansby was riding an indoor mini-coaster with his twin brother at Go Bananas in Norridge,
Illinois on April 2, 2011, when he wriggled out of his restraints and
stood up. He soon lost his balance and fell backwards to his death,
after being wedged in between the moving cars. The toddler's parents witnessed the tragedy,
and the center's owner was charged for not keeping maintenance records on-hand for investigation.
The boy's parents, along with several witnesses,
sued the site after the incident, but the park reopened just a few days later
after passing a state inspection. The ride is still operational to this day.
Myrtle Beach's Magic Harbor earned the nickname "Haunted Harbor" after
a 13-year-old girl was thrown from its Black Witch coaster on April 3,
1983. Witnesses said the girl, Sherri Depew, was seated properly for the ride,
but her lap bar came undone partway through. A fellow rider told the local news:
"She wasn't doing anything. It just popped her over the front seat. She
was trying her best to bring herself back in, but there was nothing to reach for."
Depew's family sued the park for her death,
claiming that it had been aware of the potential hazards of the ride,
but employed incompetent operators to staff it. The park ultimately shut down in 1999.
Six Flags Over Mid-America in St. Louis, Missouri was the site of a sudden calamity on July 7, 1984,
when 46-year-old Stella Holcomb slipped from the standing Rail Blazer coaster and was flung
20 feet to her death. Her husband Carl, who was also on the ride, was there to witness it.
"As we made this sharp whip, she was gone, just like that."
According to the New York Times, park managers took the opportunity
after the incident to tout the ride's safety design, saying:
"We have a locked shoulder brace, a knee harness, and a third safety belt that's also
locked on top of it, so from a theoretical standpoint that shouldn't have occurred."
They also suggested that she may have fainted during the ride,
and that her weight may have been a factor as well, but her husband disagreed. Holcomb's
family settled with the company for $1.8 million, and the park replaced its standing
coaster cars with the original train cars that had been in place for a decade before.