A frightening ride at the Miami-Dade County Youth Fair on Sunday afternoon when a driveline on a ride came loose while people were on it.
Several people right outside the ride in question told NBC6 that these things happen.
Everyone that was one this ride was safe, and now measures are being taken to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
“They gotta fix it, they gotta fix the problems,” said one mother at the fairgrounds on Monday.
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For some, like Stephanie Chinloy, a broken ride is a big issue.
"I personally don’t go on rides, but the kids go on the rides and they are the most important thing, that’s what we worry about," she said. "So yeah, definitely would avoid that ride, maybe all the rides."
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But those who come to the fair year after year — like Marie Olcano — say they’re not worried.
“It’s not the first time, it’s not going to be the last time," she said. "This is going to happen.”
On Sunday afternoon the 1001 Naughts ride had a driveline come loose while roughly 15 people were on it.
The general manager of the ride’s operating company, North American Midway Entertainment, says that the operator saw that something was wrong, stopped the ride and everyone evacuated safely.
“What happened here is unfortunate, but everything worked as it should have worked,” Tony Diaz said.
According to Diaz, whose operating company oversees all 85 rides in the fair, state ride inspectors do a pass through of all the rides before the fair’s opening, and the operating company checks all the rides daily.
This one in particular didn’t pose a problem on Sunday or before. None of the other rides in the fair posed a problem either.
But can problems still happen?
“It’s mechanical equipment and there are going to be minor things," Diaz said. "But inspection and redundancies, this part wasn’t able to go anywhere because this device was designed that way. It’s designed that way that the ride is going to go into the station if something happens."
The state needs to re-certify the ride before it can be ridden again. Frequent fair goers, like Olcano, the broken bar is nothing to fret over.
“It’s basic mechanics," she said. "Things are made, things break, we fix 'em, we move on.”
The Miami-Dade County Youth Fair is one of the major events North American Midway Entertainment does. The company says this ride is currently in the repair phase, meaning that on Tuesday or Wednesday, repairs will be finished. Then, the state will come and do an inspection to make sure everything is good to go before it reopens sometime later this week.
Diaz says that this is standard procedure whenever an event like this takes place.
