On Monday night, three girls fell out of a auto on the ride at the Greene County Fair, and there was no seat belt.
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GREENE COUNTY, TN (WJHL) – Greene County Sheriff Pat Hankins confirmed to News Channel 11 that three people have fallen from a ferris wheel at the Greene County Fair. The two older girls are still in the hospital and in stable condition. Bracken Burns, the director of trauma services for Johnson City Medical Center, said the 6-year-old was critically injured, while her 10-year-old sister and a 16-year-old female who shared their seat were described as stable.
According to media reports, Davis said police had not been able to confirm reports that the basket was rocking before it flipped.
The Greeneville Sun has reported that Greene County Fair Board officials made a decision to go through with a five-year contract with a Family Attractions despite the North Carolina incident, citing the company’s previous safety record in Tennessee and the owners’ claims that they were not involved with the Vortex ride.
Davis added that a federal inspector was expected to arrive sometime Wednesday and that the rides will be closed until further notice.
“We need to understand the mechanics of what happened first”, he said. The president told News 2 it’s still too early to comment with the accident being under investigation. “Stop! Stop the machine!’ It seemed like it was a millennium before it stopped”, Lynthacum said. “We expect for them to be here and put on a good carnival act for the week of our fair”.
“Other than the ferris wheel that was involved with the accident, and I’ve done a detailed inspection of each and every ride. nothing serious [was] wrong with any of the rides”.
In a follow-up to the audit a year ago, the agency said Tennessee law does not require the state to hire its own inspectors. But outside inspectors said they check the equipment daily. Because of this accident, the operators will have to have a new third-party inspection conducted before the ride can qualify for a new annual permit in Tennessee, Farrar said.
The Greene County incident was the eighth injury incident reported to Tennessee authorities on amusement rides this summer: They included fractured wrists and knee caps for a woman ejected from a ride in Gatlinburg, and in Pigeon Forge, a broken arm on a roller coaster and injured backs from doing back flips at a trampoline park and being hit from behind on an alpine coaster. In 2015, amusement rides accounted for more than 30,000 trips to emergency rooms across the country, Davis said. Along with facial swelling, she has a fever and possibly a bacterial infection, the mother said.
“I know some things need to change”, she wrote.
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“I spent a long, hot day today looking at all the other rides out here”.
