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Ninja at Six Flags Magic Mountain Derails

Intricks

Intricks

Strata Poster
This popped up on my news feed, but Ninja at SFMM has derailed and struck a tree. They are currently rescuing stranded riders.

Edit: 4 injured.


Source
 
All the best to those injured.

Are these Arrow suspended coasters free swingers or have a maximum angle they can swing to? Felt pretty free swinging on Iron Dragon but heard that's the tamest of the lot.
 
Supposedly a tree fell on it according to Los Angeles County Fire Department and Santa Clarita Sheriffs department.
[tweet]https://twitter.com/SCVSHERIFF/status/486331625525874690[/tweet]
 
The last person has been successfully evacuated by the Fire Department.

For those who are interested, Train 3 was the one involved in the incident.
 
The full story as it stands so far:

About two dozen people were trapped on the Ninja roller coaster at Magic Mountain and four others were injured after a tree branch obstructed the high-speed ride, officials said.

The ride was in a "precarious position" as the people were suspended about 40 feet above the ground on the roller coaster, said Michael Pittman, a Los Angeles County Fire Department dispatch supervisor.

He told The Times that the four injuries appeared to be minor.

A tree branch somehow obstructed the roller coaster, stranding the car and forcing the ride to be shut down around 6 p.m., officials said.

Fire Inspector Fred Flores said the branch was lying across the tracks, derailing the first car. He said that 11 people had been rescued and that 11 more were waiting to be removed from the cars as firefighters worked amid the branches above the ground.

"It's in a very difficult place to get to," Flores told KCAL-Channel 9.

The people on the ride were "all alert and corresponding with park personnel during the evacuation process," park spokeswoman Sue Carpenter said in a statement.

A specialized urban search-and-rescue team, which has extrication and clamping tools, was dispatched to the park. Firefighters positioned ladders next to the roller coaster, which was amid thick foliage, according to television news footage

Stranded passengers could be seen talking to firefighters who were next to the car working to free them.

Magic Mountain bills the Ninja ride as "The Black Belt of Roller Coasters," racing along a twisting track at 55 mph.

"Your whole body will swing out to the sides as you take winding snake-like turns at nearly 4G," the park says on its website.

The ride will remain closed while inspectors survey the track and the area, Carpenter said.

"The safety of our guests and employees is our No. 1 priority," she said.

Earlier this year, a Times analysis of more than 2,000 accident reports from Southern California theme parks found that accidents were rare.

The most common accidents and incidents were fainting, nausea and dizziness. People were more likely to get sick or hurt on older attractions than on newer rides. And about 1 in 8 accident reports, as they are called, involved riders who were hurt while getting on or off an attraction.

The analysis examined 2,089 injury reports filed from 2007 through 2012 with the state Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees the safety of theme park rides.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-people-trapped-magic-mountain-20140707-story.html
 
Injury numbers have now been revised down to two, who are now being hospitalized for minor injuries.
 
I would imagine apart of the remedy for SFMM would be a more aggressive tree removal along the hill that Ninja (and the log flume) run through. Unfortunate, as that is the wow factor for Ninja's layout.

On another note - do we know where in the layout the derailment occurred?
 
It was more than a tree branch, it was basically a full sized pine tree that the train struck. Pictures from the ride itself show that one of the wheel bogeys is actually bent.

chi-magic-mountain-ride-accident-20140707


You can see the left front wheel bogey is bent out of alignment, whereas it's supposed to be straight and parallel:

bjbc083001ghju080001i3.jpg


And the offender leaning against the track:

resize


So this is my prognosis:

-A sizeable pine tree somehow became uprooted and fell against the track (no word on if the track itself is actually damaged)
-The train comes rolling along as usual, front left bogey on car 1 strikes the tree and is mangled out of alignment, causing a partial derailment
-Train continues to violently and abruptly stop as more bogeys are mangled out of alignment

All in all, out of what COULD have happened, this is the best case scenario. The engineering behind the ride kept the train from falling off the track. Probably a testament as to how overbuilt us americans tended to make things back in the good old days..
 
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