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“The names change, the stories change, and everything is makeshift,” wrote Joe Filoromo, a Pennsylvania ride official familiar with Air Glory owner Gary Ross, in a cautionary e-mail. “... There are other states who have had problems. If he opens in Florida, you will need a sedative to sleep.”
Ross ultimately withdrew his 2002 application to operate in Florida after deciding he couldn’t meet that state’s requirements for operating a thrill ride from a crane, according to e-mails obtained by the Wisconsin State Journal under Florida’s open records law.
Several calls to Ross last week to comment for this story were not returned.
Ross continued operating in some other states, including Wisconsin, where a 16-year old Menasha girl died in July after falling 50 feet from his homemade swing at a Christian music festival in Oshkosh. Ross’ path through several states illustrates the patchwork systems of regulating amusement rides that exist across the U.S.
Because there is no federal regulation of fixed-site amusement rides and only limited jurisdiction over traveling rides, states serve as the key oversight. This creates a checkered map of inspection programs, ranging from some states that conduct inspections at every setup to those that don’t require inspection at all.
Ride owners say they have a vested interest in keeping rides well-maintained, which creates a strong system of self-regulation. Some ride companies or carnival sponsors employ independent inspectors, and insurance companies typically inspect rides before issuing policies.
Amusement industry experts, however, say that riders can’t count on rules being up to snuff from state to state.
“There are 50 states and 50 ways of doing this,” said Rob Jacobs, chief of the Bureau of Fair Ride Inspections at the Department of Agriculture in Florida.
Wisconsin approved swing
When Gary Ross left the state of Florida in 2002 after failing to get an operating license for his ride, he told Florida officials it was because he thought he had “about a 40 percent chance of passing the inspection,” according to an e-mail from Michael Rinehart, who was, at the time, a manager in the Florida Bureau of Fair Ride Inspections.
Florida required that before Ross’ ride could run, he had to hire a professional engineering firm to inspect the crane and certify it met safety and wind speed standards. The professional engineer also had to agree that the crane could be operated without a certified crane operator, instead with a trained amusement ride operator.
Rides that are homemade, like Ross’, create special challenges for states trying to ensure safety.
The testing Florida requires can be costly and Ross “made an economic decision” not to operate there, said Florida’s Jacobs. “There are people who don’t come here because they can’t comply with our requirements,” Jacobs said.
The following year, Ross applied for a ride registration in Wisconsin. Officials of the state Department of Commerce, which enforces ride safety regulations, also expressed concern about Ross’ Giant Swing.
An Aug. 13, 2003, e-mail from Larry Stilen to Randy Baldwin, both Department of Commerce employees, about Ross’ Giant Swing noted that another state official “felt uncomfortable with what they were proposing.”
Stilen wrote that he didn’t review architectural drawings of the swing because it was a portable, not permanent, ride. Only permanent rides get such a review, under Commerce regulations, and Stilen said in the e-mail that he wrote up a list of concerns he would have if the swing was a permanent ride.
Greg Jones, administrator for Commerce’s safety and buildings division, which includes amusement rides, said Ross satisfied requests by Commerce for information.
“We asked for the engineering study, he brought it in, that met our needs, so we approved it,” Jones said.
Operator error
Local police and a state inspector said Elizabeth Mohl’s death on the ride was caused by operator error, not the ride itself. Ross’ Giant Swing had not been inspected in Wisconsin since 2004, although it was registered to operate in the state in each of the next three years, state records show. When it was inspected this summer after the accident, an inspector found 25 ride violations.
A state spokesman acknowledged that had it been inspected before operating, the ride probably would have been “red-tagged,” or shut down, if that many violations had been found. Whether a ride is dangerous enough to red-tag is up to a state inspector.
Wisconsin’s system of inspecting amusement park rides, while more rigorous than some states, lacks the safeguards of some that are considered model programs, experts said.
Commerce says it has a goal of inspecting rides once a year. But with a limited budget and only five inspectors, inspectors may not check rides once a year or return promptly to those that have been flagged with violations, a State Journal investigation showed.
Some states — such as North Carolina, Massachusetts and Florida — require inspections on every setup of a portable ride. Other states require that rides be inspected before they can run for a season or mandate that violations be fixed before the ride can operate.
Illegal bungee jump?
Before Ross began operating Air Glory’s Giant Swing, he ran a traveling bungee jump ride under the name St. Louis Bungy Jump, according to documents obtained from the state of Illinois under its open records law. Ross applied to operate his bungee jump in Illinois in 1993, 1996 and 1997, Ross wrote in a letter to Illinois officials, but was denied because he didn’t meet rules.
In 1997, an Illinois carnival inspector reported seeing him dismantling a trailer-mounted bungee jump in Collinsville, Ill., without a permit. A state lawyer wrote a warning letter to Ross, saying he had “little doubt” the state could make the case that Ross had been operating “an illegal carnival operation.” There’s no indication he was ever prosecuted, records show.
Ross sent a letter to the state of Illinois in 1999 in which he wrote that the existing bungee rules were “bureaucratic, trivial and overlook some of the most important aspects of safe operation,” the records show. In the same letter advocating for bungee rule changes, he wrote: “We put on the best entertainment and do things right.”
A year later, he applied under the name Air Glory to operate a swing ride. The swing ride, the same one that later led to the death of Mohl, was registered in 2001 and inspected every year after until 2006 in Illinois. A second Giant Swing operated by Ross was registered and inspected from 2003 to 2007.
Other states allowed swing
Although Ross eventually passed scrutiny in Illinois, in Florida, he left the state without even qualifying for an inspection in 2002. Likewise, Pennsylvania never approved an application for the ride, according to a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture, the Pennsylvania body that regulates rides. Ross did not apply to run his ride in North Carolina, but a state official there said the fact that the Giant Swing uses a crane would have prevented it from operating.
Jonathan Brooks, chief of the elevator division of the North Carolina Department of Labor, said other ride owners have told him they’d “play” North Carolina “if it wasn’t so strict.”
Other states, including at least Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Wisconsin, allowed Ross to operate his swing rides. In Iowa, which requires a state inspection before a ride can operate for a season, both Giant Swings owned by Ross were inspected early in the summer of 2007.
After Mohl’s death in July, Ross’ insurer suspended his coverage. Missouri, Iowa and Wisconsin cancelled Air Glory’s ride registration, and Illinois issued a stop-operation order, public records show. Mohl’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit last month against Ross and the organizers of the Oshkosh festival.
Sharing information
In recent years, some amusement ride inspection officials have recognized the usefulness of cooperating on ride safety across states. Better communication could help officials spot trends in problematic rides or operators, said Kathy Fackler, president of the amusement ride watchdog group Saferparks.
“If each state is inspecting carnival rides and investigating carnival accidents, and that safety information stays within the state, then you can’t share the lessons learned,” Fackler said. “Every state and every operator has to stumble over the same problems over and over.”
While traveling rides fall under the jurisdiction of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the federal agency generally limits itself to investigating accidents, collecting accident information and issuing safety bulletins about rides.
In hopes of creating a national tracking system, the Council for Amusement and Recreational Equipment Safety has started a way to search for information on individual rides. Only four states participate in the program. Wisconsin does not. Officials can also receive safety alerts from other states through CARES.
“Accident prevention is all about identifying the riskiest or more common scenarios that lead to injury,” Fackler said. “If everyone has to discover those alone, it’s going to take a whole lot more dead and damaged people to get these problems fixed.”
Deborah Ziff is a reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal. Reporter Mark Pitsch contributed to this report.
