Children’s pod on London Eye blown open by Storm Henk
STORM HENK blew a roof hatch open on a family’s London Eye capsule 400ft up in the air, on Tuesday.
David Nock, 43, from Bournemouth, and 11 family members, including five children, were at the top of the ride when a gust tore away the access hatch.
The hatch was left dangling by metal wires and making a crunching sound as the pod on the 1,700-ton wheel rotated.
Mr Nock, an IT consultant, said the children, aged 11 to 15, were terrified.
“We were right at the top and there were very high winds and the service hatch on the pod got blown off.
“There were metal wires that hold it on and it was hanging on by those. We were stuck at the top for a good five minutes. The whole thing was stopping and starting and moving side to side. The noise was quite deafening.”
The attraction was later closed for a brief period. London Eye said it was an “isolated technical issue” and no parts of the pod detached from the structure.
In other news, a man saved a threeyear-old girl and her mother from their car that had been swept away by floods. Liam Stych, 28, saw the Fiat Punto being dragged under a bridge in Hall Green, Birmingham at 4.15pm on Tuesday.
Social media showed the roadworks engineer clambering across a footbridge and pulling the child out of the window while holding on to the railing.
He then ran to his van and lowered himself onto the car again. He smashed the rear window and fed ratchet straps inside and out through the driver’s window, attaching them to the bridge.
The mum climbed into the back seat and scrambled out of the window. She and Mr Stych then jumped into the 5ft deep water and waded to safety.
A driver in his 50s, from Bath, died after a tree fell on his car near Cirencester in Gloucestershire.