Huge crack on rollercoaster ‘was visible days before it was closed’
A large crack on a rollercoaster support pillar seen moving as riders raced past was spotted days before the ride was shut down.
Jeremy Wagner was visiting Carowinds amusement park in Charlotte with his son, daughter, niece and son’s friend on June 30 when he saw the crack hundreds of feet up on the Fury 325 coaster and recorded it.
On Friday, North Carolina Department of Labor Commissioner Josh Dobson said that the crack was observed about a week before the ride was closed by park officials.
‘It looks like maybe six to 10 days prior, some pictures had been taken that shows the beginning of the crack, and then by obviously last Friday, the thing was completely severed,’ Dobson told Fox News Digital.
Dobson added that ‘until we’re 100% comfortable issuing that new certificate of operation, we will not do so’.
‘We’re going to take as long as it takes,’ he said.
A Carowinds spokesperson told the news outlet that the fracture formed along a weld line of one of the steel support pillars. The ride’s manufacturer is producing a new support column to deliver next week.
The spokesperson stated that ‘following the installation of the new column, and as part of our normal protocol for rides such as Fury 325, we will conduct an extensive series of tests to ensure the safety and integrity of the coaster’.
They will involve using an accelerometer that measures variations in the ride experience utilizing sensors.
The park plans to let the rollercoaster run for 500 full cycles and perform inspections and tests, then ask a third-party testing company to do a final inspection ‘to ensure the ride exceeds all required specifications’, the spokesperson said.
Fury 325 is ‘the tallest, fastest, longest giga coaster in North America’, according to the Carowinds website.
Wagner told The New York Times: ‘I was trying to shoot the video, and my hands were shaking because I knew how quick this could be catastrophic.’
A 911 call was also made about the crack, CBS 17 reported.
No riders were injured.
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