Advertisement
But it can be a year or two and thousands of passengers later before inspectors check to make sure the deficiency is fixed and the ride meets minimum state safety standards, state records show.
 |
The High Flyer is up and running. Photographed Saturday, August 25, 2007, at the Grant County Fair in Lancaster, Wis. WSJ/John Maniaci |
That’s one of several findings of a Wisconsin State Journal investigation that experts said reveal weaknesses in Wisconsin’s amusement ride inspection program.
The State Journal reviewed the program as state Department of Commerce officials begin their study of amusement ride regulations in the wake of the July 14 death of a Menasha teenager who died after falling about 50 feet from a ride in Oshkosh.
Commerce Secretary Mary Burke said in an interview that the state’s current inspection program “overall has a good record,” but she said improvements would be made in a number of areas if needed.
Wisconsin’s inspectors are knowledgeable and rigorous, according to ride owners. And the program is better than in many states, including those that don’t regulate or inspect amusement rides at all, experts said.
Still, the newspaper found:
Wisconsin has five inspectors, half number it did 20 years ago, despite having to inspect more rides. To read more, click here.
The newspaper’s findings illustrate the need for tougher state safety standards and better enforcement of them, experts said, and raise questions about whether the state is doing all it can to ensure the safety of ride passengers.
“The program needs to be revitalized,” David Collins, a Newbury Park, Calif.-based amusement ride consultant, inspector and inspection trainer, said of Wisconsin’s inspection program. “It is not an expense. It is the thing that keeps the public safer. You have to have a proactive program.”
Ride owners say they have a vested interest in keeping rides in good condition and making repairs without delay sometimes on the day the state flags the violations.
“My children ride them every day,” said Chad Duchow, owner of Mr. Ed’s Magical Midways of North Freedom near Baraboo. “I wouldn’t want my children falling out of something, so I’m not going to put someone else’s child at risk.”
And state inspectors aren’t the only ones checking bolts, latches, restraints, electrical equipment and hydraulics. Insurers, some carnival sponsors and owners themselves perform regular inspections, owners say.
Current state regulations require that all rides, whether at fixed-site locations like Little Amerricka in Marshall or as part of traveling carnivals like Mr. Ed’s, be registered with the state annually in order to carry passengers. The rides must be inspected daily by the owners and meet basic safety standards.
Rides must also be available each year for surprise state inspections, although not all rides are scrutinized each year. Safety violations must be corrected, or owners could face fines of up to $100 per violation though a Commerce official acknowledged the agency has never sought to fine an owner for violating regulations.
25 violations found
The State Journal reviewed paper and electronic registration and inspection records obtained under the state Open Records Law, state regulations and other data provided by Commerce after the July accident that took the life of Elizabeth Mohl, 16.
Local police and a Commerce report cited human error in Mohl’s death at a Christian music festival. In addition to shutting down the ride, Commerce found that the swing violated 25 state ride regulations-the highest number of violations for a single ride in recent years, according to state records.
But that inspection took place only after the accident, and state officials allowed it to operate at the festival before being reviewed by the state. A Commerce spokesman later acknowledged that had that number of violations been found on the ride during an inspection before the festival, as happens in some states, it likely would have been shut down as a safety hazard.
A 26th violation by Air Glory was not uncovered by the state: Seventeen-year-old Orion Ross, the son of swing owner Gary Ross, was one of four employees working on the ride on the day of Mohl’s death, according to an Oshkosh police report. State regulations require amusement ride operators to be 18 years old, and Commerce said it’s the owner’s responsibility to make sure that requirement is met.
The report does not identify Orion Ross’s actions as contributing to the accident.
Greg Jones, administrator for Safety and Buildings, the Commerce division that oversees ride inspections, defended the state’s inspection program in interviews last month saying Mohl’s death is the first passenger-related fatality on an amusement ride in Wisconsin in years.
A look at companies and their violations. To read more, click here.
To search a database for violations by company since 2004, click here.
A massive task’
But Jones acknowledged in an interview a month earlier that Commerce does not have enough staff to inspect each high-risk thrill ride every year or reinspect rides soon after violations are found. High-risk rides include Ferris wheels, go-karts, roller coasters and other rides that are not coin-operated.
“That would be a massive task that would be taxing on a staff that doesn’t have a lot of flexibility in their workloads,” Jones said of annual inspections and reinspections of violations.
Instead, he said, before each new carnival season, officials prioritize inspecting rides using violations from the previous year and companies with a history of violating regulations.
A state database of ride registrations and inspections shows that inspectors conducted about 1,600 inspections between 2005 and early August. But it’s tough to say with certainty much more about the inspection program because of the way it keeps records, according to interviews with Commerce officials and a State Journal analysis of data. Among the gaps:
nThe database doesn’t keep a historical record of the number of rides registered and inspected each year.
nThe agency has been unable to provide a precise accounting of the percentage of rides it has inspected in recent years.
nIt’s unclear how many rides with violations are reinspected in the year the violations are found because the agency doesn’t keep statistics on reinspections or compliance with corrective orders.
Burke said better recordkeeping will be one of the goals of the program review.
“I think we should make improvements to our database system,” she said. “It doesn’t have the capabilities at this point that we’d like to see of ongoing tracking of our client-management system.“
Commerce does track current year registration and inspection information. This year, 1,486 rides were registered as of late August, including 346 coin-operated kiddie rides, such as those at a mall, that don’t get inspected. Of those in the inspection pool, 582, or 51 percent, have been inspected.
Typically, more than 60 percent of high-risk rides are inspected each year, according to estimates from the agency.
Inspection gaps
Experts said the state is taking a risk by not inspecting each high-risk ride at least once every year. And they said some states, like Massachusetts and North Carolina, inspect traveling rides at every setup.
“I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing that 40 percent of all my rides and devices haven’t been looked at,” said Bill Avery, an Orlando, Fla., amusement ride consultant who has served as a safety director for major theme parks. “I sure as hell, as a patron, wouldn’t want to guess which ones haven’t been looked at.”
For those rides that are inspected, state officials are finding violations.
The electronic database reviewed by the newspaper, begun in 2004 through July 2007, contains about 925 total violations. Officials said the number is likely higher because some 2004 violations aren’t listed in the database and maintained only on paper records.
When inspectors find that a ride has violated the state safety code, they order the owner to correct it, usually with a deadline of a few weeks. In some cases, inspectors return later the same year to confirm that the fix has been made. But in others, it may take a year or two before an inspector checks to see if the violation has been corrected, state records show.
“If they don’t reinspect, and they’re the regulators, that’s not a good thing,” Avery said.
But Burke said the practice doesn’t necessarily reflect a shortcoming in the state’s system.
“It may not be a problem because the ride wasn’t, in fact, operating in Wisconsin or it wasn’t a safety issue,” she said. “It all depends on what the violation is and whether it is operating in Wisconsin.”
Questions linger
The ride inspection program has attracted attention before. A 1989 audit, prompted by concern that the state wasn’t conducting adequate safety inspections of rides, raised some questions that echo today, according to the State Journal’s review.
The 1989 audit urged the then-Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations, which oversaw the program, to better track whether ride owners made repairs on rides with safety violations. But officials at Commerce, which inherited the program in 1996, said there’s still no complete record of which violations have been reinspected and found to be corrected in recent years.
“There’s going to be a little incompleteness and inconsistency along those lines,” Jones said.
As the agency has moved toward using a computer file to track registrations and inspections, it has asked inspectors to more dutifully record when violations have been corrected, said Chandra Miller Fienen, Commerce’s executive assistant.
The 1989 audit also noted a need for getting all available accident information calling for an agreement with the state insurance commissioner to collect copies of all claims involving amusement rides. No agreement was signed, but the state has ordered ride operators to report all accidents involving more than first aid treatment within two days.
The state still does not require amusement ride owners to carry insurance, as do most states.
Inspectors impress upon ride owners to report accidents as required, Jones said. But critics said the reporting of amusement ride accidents and injuries in most states and around the country is unreliable even where such reporting is required.
In Wisconsin, a total of 91 ride accidents were reported to the state from 2004 through mid-August, Jones said. Of those, nearly 80 percent involved no injury or only minor scrapes and bruises.
About 60 percent of the reported accidents were caused by a rider, he said.
Until recently, inspectors couldn't even shut down rides with dangerous violation on the spot. To read more, click here.
Being the bad guy’
After Mohl’s death in Oshkosh, Burke ordered a review of the ride inspection program and its regulations “to ensure Wisconsin has the highest possible safety standard for amusement rides in the country.”
Experts noted that unlike several other states, Wisconsin doesn’t now require rides to meet international industry standards into its regulations and hasn’t made significant changes to its amusement ride code since 1992. Since then, new rides have gotten faster and more technologically advanced.
But Burke said state regulations in some cases are tougher than those drafted by ASTM International, which has created basic internationally accepted ride standards. Officials will measure the newest ASTM standards against Wisconsin’s, she said.
They’ll also consider mandatory insurance requirements for ride owners and new training or certification requirements for ride operators.
She said Commerce will “fast track” the development of new regulations, which includes public hearings and approval by the Legislature, so they could take effect before fair season next summer.
If Burke is serious about having the highest safety standard for amusement rides in the U.S., Wisconsin has to hold amusement ride owners accountable for fixing code violations, said Mark Mooney, inspections director for the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety and president of the Council for Amusement and Recreational Equipment Safety, a group of state inspection officials.
“Sometimes, it takes an accident like Air Glory to say we’re not going to take it any more,” Mooney said. “Maybe the state needs to be the bad guy and if the state’s the bad guy, the good companies are going to be better off and people will want to go on the rides because they know they’ll be safe.”
Mark Pitsch and Deaborah Ziff are reporters for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison.
