On June 14, 1986, the Galaxyland Amusement Park, located inside the huge\u00a0West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, was packed. A concert was in progress\u00a0and the Mindbender, the world’s largest indoor roller coaster, was doing a\u00a0brisk business.<\/p>\n
Twice during that day, a ride operator heard metallic banging noises coming\u00a0from the coaster, but when the four 16-passenger trains were run empty,\u00a0maintenance crews couldn’t locate the source of the noise, and the ride was\u00a0again opened to the public.<\/p>\n
Ron Chayko and his best friend David Sager were visiting the park that day\u00a0and had wanted to go on the Mindbender, but when they first arrived, the\u00a0ride was shut down, so they visited the nearby arcade till an announcement\u00a0was made that the Mindbender was back up and running. They sat in the final,\u00a0yellow car of the train, which then began its looping, climbing and diving\u00a0ride.<\/p>\n
No one knew that some bolts on the left side of the final car had fallen\u00a0off, and this suddenly caused the final car to derail. The yellow car\u00a0fishtailed wildly, knocking the lap-bars loose and hurling passengers out\u00a0and down. The train was still running, heading into an uplift for the next\u00a0drop, but had lost momentum and slid back down the incline, crashing into\u00a0support pillars along the way.<\/p>\n
Ron Chayko remembers flying over David Sager and falling below the track,\u00a0behind a pillar. When he tried to sit up he saw that both his legs were\u00a0broken, he was unable to move his left arm, and he had great difficulty\u00a0breathing due to a punctured lung. He lay in agony for 15 minutes till a man\u00a0jumped down to him, calling to other rescuers “I found him!” When paramedics\u00a0lifted him onto a stretcher, Chayko’s entire left side folded in on itself\u00a0due to his broken shoulder, pelvis and ribs. He survived, though he suffers\u00a0from chronic pain as a result.<\/p>\n
David Sager, Tony Mandrusiak and Cindy Sims\u00a0were all killed instantly, and a more than a dozen others were injured.\u00a0The Mindbender was shut down for seven months while investigations were\u00a0made. It was determined tthat the axle assembly was faulty, and that the\u00a0problem was exacerbated by problems translating the ride’s maintenance and\u00a0repair instructions from German into English and the fact that the
\nmanufacturer went bankrupt during installation of the coaster.<\/p>\n
When the Mindbender was reopened in 1987, it had been redesigned to have\u00a0only three 12-passenger cars, and safety belts and over-the-shoulder padded\u00a0head restraints were added in addition to the standard lap bars. The ride\u00a0has been completely accident-free ever since.<\/p>\n
Culled from: Wikipedia And here’s a nice little clip about the accident. \u00a0It’s worth it just to hear Canadians describe the incident: “It was pretty scary cuz we were sitting upside down and we didn’t know what was happening and like we seen people laying on the ground, eh.”<\/p>\n
\nSubmitted by: Aimee<\/a><\/p>\n