According to a state inquiry published Friday, the 6-year-old girl who died after falling 120 feet on a ride at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado earlier this month was not securely strapped in and was sitting on top of two seatbelts.
6-Year-Old Girl dies after falling 120ft from an amusement park. (Photo: Nation)
6-Year-Old Girl Ejected from Her Seat
In a recently published article in Daily Mail, when the managers of a Colorado amusement park ignored alerts, a six-year-old girl was thrown from her seat on a ride and died. On September 5, Wongel Estifanos, of Colorado Springs, was riding the Haunted Mine Drop with her family at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park in Colorado when both operators overlooked her seatbelt, which was incorrectly fastened.
The ride, which lowers guests’ 120 feet, is fitted with a two-belt safety system that includes a neural bar and a regular seatbelt. It does not include a shoulder harness. The young girl died from numerous blunt force injuries after being thrown from the ride because the operators failed to detect she was not wearing her seatbelts, according to the Garfield County Coroner’s Office.
Report from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Division of Oil and Public Safety
The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Division of Oil and Public Safety, which oversees amusement park rides, found that the two people operating the ride were given indicators that one of the seatbelts was not properly buckled, but they did not notice because Wongel Estifanos, the girl who died, had a belt strap sitting across her lap.
Multiple operator mistakes, as well as a lack of appropriate training and knowledge of how the ride’s operator interface operated, are blamed in the study for the girl’s death, according to a recently published report in FOX13 Salt Lake City.
Meanwhile, The Haunted Mine Drop ride, according to the report, will stay closed until the division re-permits it, which can only happen if the problems highlighted in the report are resolved. Following the incident, the state ordered the park to shut for several days so that employees operating on other attractions could get refresher training.
Operators Involved Were Newly Hired and Trained
The two ride operators operating at the time, according to the report, had been at the park for approximately two months and less than three weeks, respectively. The first was recruited on July 9 and trained on August 5, while the second was hired on August 21 and trained the following day.
The operators were also not trained on the ride manufacturer’s operating instructions, according to the report. Estifanos’ belt had not been unbuckled from the ride prior to the alert sounding on the interface, and one of the operators double-checked the rods and found them to be in their correct position.
