Ninja @ Six Flags Magic Mountain Front Bogie Derails

http://ktla.com/2014/07/07/4-injured-on ... epartment/

Is this the single worst season in history for industry incidents? Every week something major happens it seems.

Four people received minor injuries on a Six Flags Magic Mountain ride and up to 30 more individuals were stuck off the ground, fire officials said Monday evening

Los Angeles County Fire Department first responders were called to the scene just before 6 p.m., according to a supervisor with the department.

The situation was caused by a tree branch that fell on the track of the roller coaster and obstructed the train, according to Magic Mountain spokeswoman Sue Carpenter.

Four patients received minor injuries on the Ninja ride at the Santa Clarita amusement park, fire Supervisor Ed Pittman said.

Twenty to 30 people were stuck on the ride about 20 feet off the ground, Pittman said.

"The 25 guests on the train were all alert and corresponding with park personnel during the evacuation process," Carpenter said.

Multiple cars holding riders appeared to be stuck at an angle in an area where the tracks pass under trees, aerial video from the scene showed.

Firefighters appeared to cutting at or struggling with foliage near the large white pillars that support the ride.


The ride is described as a "stealth assassin" and "suspended swinging roller coaster" on the Six Flags website.

"Shoulder harnesses secure you in place but don't expect to just sit in one place??????you're going to be swinging all over, a full 90 degrees each way," the site's description reads.

KTLA's Nidia Becerra Tijerino and Kennedy Ryan contributed to this article.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Not as bad as Demon stuck in the loop during the 90's lol.

[Mikey]

Glad I sold all of my stock in Six Flags.

[Oscar]

dang!

[Turbo]

tiepilot35 wrote:

"Shoulder harnesses secure you in place but don't expect to just sit in one place??????you're going to be swinging all over, a full 90 degrees each way," the site's description reads.

KTLA's Nidia Becerra Tijerino and Kennedy Ryan contributed to this article.

I'm sorry, I love Ninja, probably one of my favorite rides at that park. This is also a terrible incident. But the way that's worded and put in the article is kind of coincidental lol

This is a very small incident, you know the media likes to exaggerate these situations.
I remember they do these same reports when the coaster just gets stuck on the chain lift.
Good thing no one was hurt seriously, but it seems like it was the tree trimmers fault, not the coaster. Don't blame the driver when a tree collapses in his way.

they will probably blame the trees and trim/cut all the trees close to coasters now

[TTD03]

Yea this is pretty bad. Bad enough to scare people away I bet. Could this be the end of Ninja?
I mean the thing is kinda old...

It wont be the end, the ride is still very popular, since it's one of the only rides the family can still ride together.

[gouldy]

This is what it looked like from on the train

zezqw7R.jpg (33.99 KiB) Viewed 1906 times

[TTD03]

Man if I was in the front row, i'd be freakin terrified!

[mkingy]

So gouldy planning to ride this if it opens by the time you get there? :<

[gouldy]

Yeah. I'll just remember to not tell Lindsey about it...

[mkingy]

Decent ride to be fair. Station has a bend in it like Klondike @ Drayton used to!

Was the train going fast when this happened? Curious to know.

Helo9797 wrote:

the ride is still very popular,

I wish I could believe that piece of information was reason enough for a ride to not be removed. I quite dislike it when people use popularity as a reason that they "know" a ride is staying, but corporations would rather do what they think is better for the long term future than emotional appeal.

You know, I feel bad for those that were injured and I hope for a speedy recovery; and this may be in bad flavor to say, but I'm so glad the accident wasn't because of negligence from the park. This was purely a freak accident in the most purest of definitions..."Final Destination" anybody? (minus the dying part)

Unless you can count "a branch falling" (because branches don't fall from time to time (sarcasm)) as negligence.

[Coasterkidmwm]

You really should look into how Demon derailed at SFGAm and then stopped upsidedown in the loop. THAT was a freak accident lol.

[Turbo]

If you really wanted to dig deep, you could say that the park didn't keep their foliage trimmed to a safe distance. But with a park that size it would be difficult to do. Someone could actually claim negligence, but it was an accident. ck has a point lol

[afro85]

I just saw the Demon accident, my fist thought was why they didn't just push the train, but if it was in perfect balance then the train would probably weight too much!

[Coasterkidmwm]

The wheel assembly broke and jammed the train into the track holding the train in place. They had to chain the train to the track to evac people in case it started to move again mid evacuation.

[Mikey]

This is 100% the parks fault. Even if it's a freak accident, it still could have been prevented if the park was routinely inspecting the trees near the ride. This is trivial considering the fact that the ride was built, and operates within an earthquake prone area. That means regular inspections of footers and support structures for signs of fatigue, stress, joint separation, broken welds etc. Your telling me that during all those inspections, no one thought to look at the trees in the fall path of the ride?

Wonder what else did Six Flags forget to look at....

[Oscar]

Turns out an entire tree fell onto the roller coaster and that caused the accident. Blame landscaping.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Yeah. Hopefully they won't clear cut everything around the foresty rides after this.

Oscar wrote:

Turns out an entire tree fell onto the roller coaster and that caused the accident. Blame landscaping.

Really!? This is completely a different situation now.

An entire tree fell down.

And we don't know if we can still blame the park yet or not. I'm almost positive the park is expected to test the grounds for moisture and erosion and all that other stuff, but everyday is probably excessive and impossible.

So it's safe to say that sometime in between the last check up (assuming they did, not saying they did) and now, the ground underneath the tree grew unstable and today just happened to be the day when it uprooted and fell. They'll probably get audited to see if they have done any landscape surveying in the past and depending on the results they'll be able to determine if this negligence or just nature being nature.