Quote:
Originally Posted by arloiginla
Yikes I was there at that time but went on that green ride that spins you around and then moves sideways. Didn't hear anything happen until after.
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I'll try not to go into too much detail..mods you can delete it if it's too much..
I had been on that ride with a few friends about a minute before it happened. We go off and went straight to the crazy slide that was right beside it because I wanted to have a competition. As we got to the top and had just stopped with a few people in front of us, we heard a huge crash and we all looked over the edge of the slide (being up so high we had a birds eye view of everything) and saw the green cars flipped upside down and sliding off the platform. Since the ride didn't stop immediately, (I don't know how long it took to come to a complete stop), we saw the blue set of cars smash into the green cars and pushed it even further off the platform as people were frantically trying to escape, but many were stuck because of the bar that comes across your legs. The car that was the only one still on the platform had pinned a girl with her head/neck stuck in the car, while her legs were above her head (think lying on your back and kicking your legs up to try and touch them behind your head), and there was a boy beside her who I later found out were brother and sister, who was curled up in a ball holding his head, and neither of them were moving.
I stood there just in shock for a second, thinking how my worst nightmares of a ride breaking and killing me just unfolded in front of my eyes, when my friend yelled at me 'We gotta go!!.' I am a lifeguard and we had taken swimming/lifesaving courses together since we were little, and as soon as she said that I took off. I ran up and threw my mat on the slide and flew down as fast as I could with her following me, and when I came to the bottom I heard one of the ride attendants ask why I was in such a hurry, and I think I yelled out 'it broke!', and they replied 'what did?', and I replied 'the ride!' as I took off through a crowd of people. No one on that side of the midway had any idea what was going on, and most people that were by the washrooms and the twin flip/inverter area had no clue either, and I actually ran right through two cops who didn't have any idea what was going on either, as it happened about 30-40 seconds before. As I rounded the corner of the midway by the big bathrooms at he end of the sky ride, I already heard sirens coming that way. Once I made it to the ride, I somehow ran right through the whole crowd of people (I don't remember, my adrenaline was going through the roof) and ran up to the platform and just yelled that I knew how to deal with spinals and CPR and AED's. I only ever saw 3 of the victims, one who tried to escape before they got smashed by the blue car, and the boy and girl that were on the platform. Just from seeing them lie there on the platform, I knew they were the ones who needed the most help. Someone helped lift me up onto the platform and I took over for a man who was stabilizing her head and neck while we waited for spine boards. I was trying to calm the girl down, but she was screaming for her brother, who I asked if he was on the ride with her. Sure enough he was the boy lying a few feet away, who had a huge laceration to his head and was bleeding pretty bad. They ended up putting an IV in him and put him on an oxygen tank, got him on a spine board and got him out of there..I don't think at any point they did CPR, however he may have been going in an out of consciousness, but I am not sure. I was trying to hold the girl still as she was kicking and screaming and crying because she didn't want to be put on a spine board and obviously just wanted her parents, so trying to keep her still was a task because we thought it might be a suspected spinal (she was the one who was trapped in the platform, her brother was the one curled up in a ball when I first saw it). Eventually we got her on a spine board and she was taken away by EMS. The Neurologist that was there did an outstanding job working with the girl's brother, and even in organizing people as to what they should and shouldn't be doing, to keep the situation less chaotic.
This incident seriously looked like a scene from a horror film that I thought I would never have to encounter. Once myself and another bystander that I was working with walked away, it finally sunk in what had actually happened, and let me tell you, I didn't sleep at all last night, and when I did, I woke up physically shaking because I was still in so much shock. Something that bothered me though was how people just stood there and watched, rather then helped. By the time I made it from the top of that slide, all the way around to the incident, was at least 30-40 seconds, and I was still one of the first to be on the scene. I just feel grateful I guess, that I have been trained through swimming lessons on how to deal with doing first aids, using spine boards, how to handle emergency situations, and I think that not only taking a CPR course but also incorporating courses that teach people how to use spine boards and how to deal with situations like this, would be very beneficial, and more people possibly could have been assisting at the scene within less time, and they are all good life skills to have. I'm just a lifeguard, not an EMT or a paramedic, but through swimming lessons I learned the tools I would need in order to at least assist those more trained professionals in emergency situations.