The Smiler Incident 02/06/15

[jp235]

Has anybody noticed how the mirror keeps on saying the same stuff about the smiler in every news report. They are miking the story to death and the worst part about this is that I think it is even humiliating the victims by caring about how much compensation they get or how alton towers is dealing with the situation than actually caring about the victims well being

The Mirror was always going to be the one newspaper with a grudge against Merlin - after all, its main rival is The Sun, and The Sun has a huge promotional deal Merlin - think of all the free tickets and 2 for 1 vouchers The Sun gives away for all the Merlin attractions throughout the year.

[Kraken]

Just to clarify the situation with regard to 999 calls from Alton Towers...

If there is an emergency on the site (be it on the Theme Park / Waterpark / Hotels) staff have to dial a 4 digit internal "emergency" number which puts them through to Security Control. Security then make the 999 call from a number the emergency services recognise as "official" and know it is a genuine call. You would be surprised how many crank-calls get made from the park, especially when the school trips start.

[ham22]

As much as I agree with that and hadn't of thought of it that way before, surely if you provided enough detail (providing you have a vague idea of what you're on about) they would respond. They would most likely ask questions too to see if it is a hoax or not so they can have enough approximate knowledge to know what's what and whether or not they need to respond. I don't actually know this... Just my 2 cents.

Sent from my D6503 using Tapatalk

[Hitch]

In light of them stopping and starting cars on the lift hill today I have come up with a new theory, before people start going "you dont know how the ride works" you are correct I do not, this is simply another theory as to why it was sent of the lift hill.

Anyway I wonder if it would be possible that the ride forgot the train was sat at the top of the lift hill and began to move the chain back into position for the next train causing the current train to go over. If im correct the smiler lift hill chain has only a single point at which the car can connect, therefore it will always need to continue going round at some point to return this "catch" point to the bottom of the lift hill. Could this have had anything to do with it? Just my thoughts.

[Tryst]

Having worked on a number of complex sites, the procedure was always to use the internal emergency number so that access could be arranged for the emergency services. On-site security would meet them at the gate and take them directly to where they were needed. This was particularly important on sites with particular security or safety requirements, or where there was a realistic possibility that the emergency services could get lost.

My theory is that the seriousness of the situation wasn't communicated to park security in the initial call. It's perfectly feasible that the call went along the lines of "There's been an accident on Smiler. I think some people have been hurt.", rather than giving an accurate count of casualties and the severity of their injuries. There could be a few reasonable explanations for this: 1) that information wasn't immediately available to ride controllers; 2) some poor 18 year old kid had to make the call and wasn't coping well with the situation; 3) the established process doesn't require this information; and 4) all of the above. It's pretty likely that HSE will be looking at this quite closely.

[Tryst]

Anyway I wonder if it would be possible that the ride forgot the train was sat at the top of the lift hill and began to move the chain back into position for the next train causing the current train to go over. If im correct the smiler lift hill chain has only a single point at which the car can connect, therefore it will always need to continue going round at some point to return this "catch" point to the bottom of the lift hill. Could this have had anything to do with it? Just my thoughts.

Personally I'd have the control system monitor the current drawn by the lift hill motor so that it can tell if it's running, stalled, stopped or lifting a train. That would be fairly trivial to implement, but there's no guarantee that it was set up to do that.

[timmy1372]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/j ... complaints" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[tallicay2k]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/j ... complaints

This has seriously made my day!! \:D/

[Rita 2005]

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/j ... complaints

This has seriously made my day!! \:D/

Also 27,000 people have now signed the petition condemning her performance in the Varney interview.

[Rita 2005]

The Birmingham Mail have also descended into Gutter Journalism, for some reason they are trying to compare 30 minor accidents mostly non ride related that have occurred at Alton Towers in the past 3 years with last weeks incident.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/mi ... ee-9397443" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Lee]

Anyway I wonder if it would be possible that the ride forgot the train was sat at the top of the lift hill and began to move the chain back into position for the next train causing the current train to go over. If im correct the smiler lift hill chain has only a single point at which the car can connect, therefore it will always need to continue going round at some point to return this "catch" point to the bottom of the lift hill. Could this have had anything to do with it? Just my thoughts.

Personally I'd have the control system monitor the current drawn by the lift hill motor so that it can tell if it's running, stalled, stopped or lifting a train. That would be fairly trivial to implement, but there's no guarantee that it was set up to do that.

I'm pretty certain that at the very least that the ride system is aware that the lift hill is engaged with a car and is therefore pulling it

I imagine that the main point of investigation for the HSE will be to find the cause and reason as to why, after the ride system performed a safety stop and flagged an error, did the lift hill engage and allow the train to leave the crest of the hill. They'll work backwards from there using root causes analysis until they have no further questions. It's clear that the issue and scenario making all parties involved uneasy is the first lift hill, which will explain the repeated cycling of the ride and stoppages at that point today.

[Richardio123]

The Birmingham Mail have also descended into Gutter Journalism, for some reason they are trying to compare 30 minor accidents mostly non ride related that have occurred at Alton Towers in the past 3 years with last weeks incident.

http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/mi ... ee-9397443" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Another member of the "Trinity Mirror" enterprise which take every story out of proportion, and create 100s of side news articles relating to one thing. Manchester Evening News is the worse out of the lot.

[Awright92]

The emergency services cannot enter a site without permission. I studied public services in college and we looked into cases about this. The only people that can enter without permission is the police IF they have a warrant.

1 of the stories we looked into was a religious family. The house caught fire and the fire service got everyone free apart from the husbands wife, due to the husband being outside the property, the remaining fireman were not aloud to enter the house due to their religion.

Alton Towers will have control about the emergency services going onto the site unless they have a warrant

[ajh83]

First time poster, long time lurker.

Just wanted to add a few comments regarding the supposed delay in the 999 call.

I have worked as an event medic, subcontractor to the ambulance service and volunteer with a medical charity.

The ambulance service covering Alton is the West Midlands Ambulance Service known in short as WMAS (pronounced WHY-MASS).

Under normal circumstances, when a person within the WMAS area calls 999 for an ambulance the following chain of events take place:-

1) If a first responder is on duty and near by they are despatched to the incident
2) An ambulance/paramedic is simultaneously despatched
3) First responder arrives on scene and begins treatment and feeds back information to WMAS control via their radio (an Airwave direct link to the control room)
4) Ambulance/paramedic arrives and takes over

Alton Towers is in a somewhat unique position because the Alton First Responder group is based at Alton Towers. Accordingly, if Alton Towers called 999 for an ambulance right away then the first thing that would happen is that the First Responders based at Alton Towers would get a call on their radio. This would be slower than Alton Towers just sending the First Responders directly (as they did).

Furthermore, once the First Responders are on scene they have an Airwave radio link back to WMAS control. They can requests backup etc without dialling 999 as I am sure they will have.

I find it academic when 999 may have been called. The First Responders were on scene in minutes and the appropriate backup would have been requested without delay.

Just another case of the media trying to make a story out of nothing IMHO.

[Sr88]

I feel this is all irrelevant for this case, as I really doubt that Alton Towers would have had any intention of stopping them.

[abigsmurf]

The sensationalist rubbish continues:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pa ... de-5861747" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From Alton Towers statement it sounds like a kid on the ride got hysterical and they halted it on the lift hill and emptied the coaster. Of course this is all somehow Alton Tower's fault and means they're unsafe!

[JamHar]

This "story" is also being reported in The Guardian. Slow news day obviously.

http://gu.com/p/49yxk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Sentri558]

The sensationalist rubbish continues:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/pa ... de-5861747" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From Alton Towers statement it sounds like a kid on the ride got hysterical and they halted it on the lift hill and emptied the coaster. Of course this is all somehow Alton Tower's fault and means they're unsafe!

This "story" is also being reported in The Guardian. Slow news day obviously.

http://gu.com/p/49yxk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

These made me laugh

[humanshifter]

At least the Mirror included a picture of the ride. Surely anyone who knows what the ride is would realise the story is scaremongering.

Why even go to a themepark if you're going to freak out at a very small ride having to be evacuated because a kid got scared?

[timmy1372]

I'm wondering how long Oblivion and Spinball will be closed, I want to book a trip but would atleast like Oblivion to be open, not expecting the Smiler to be open anytime soon but the rest would be nice!