Should have been squeals not screams
New Zealand is no theme park.
Here we are, on the doorstep of one of the world’s great extreme tourist destinations, where people pay good money for urgent thrills laced with a real sense of scare.
The reality of jagged danger is expertly negotiated by an industry that knows how to keep the adrenalin high while still ensuring, as much as humanly possible, that the lives entrusted to its care are kept safe. Very occasionally, though, something does go horribly wrong sending a wave of empathy through the southern community.
This time the reflected distress comes from further afield; the traumatic deaths of four people in what was meant to be a fairly sedate, family-friendly ride in Australia’s Dreamworld park. This was hardly a distant disaster. New Zealanders stampede to the attraction and reports that one of the dead was originally from this country would have surprised nobody. There is a place for screams at Dreamworld, and attractions of its ilk. But they should end in exultant relief.
And on rides like the Thunder River Rapids, where the minimum age is just two, nothing more than squeals are expected, chiefly in reaction to the squirting of an animatronic elephant. Instead, just five seconds from safety, came what appears to have been a nightmarish variation on the tedious cliche of a snarl-up at the end of a conveyor belt.
The victims’ raft appears to have struck another empty one, stuck ahead of them, and flipped. The survival of the two children thrown clear from the doomed raft mitigates, if only to some extent, the horror. Miserably, reports are also laced with accounts of anguished children screaming for their parents. The sense of capricious fate also kicks in with the disclosure that a New Zealand man who with his partner was in line to get in that raft had let the group behind him go ahead because he was waiting for his partner’s mother to catch up.
The pained public inquiry must centre on the standard of maintenance and duty-of-care planning, particularly given reports that the ride had broken down shortly before the disaster. On top of which, near-fatal accident, also involving the park’s conveyor system, had struck a nearby ride in April. The authorities had investigated that one, and cleared the ride to restart. Little wonder that many people are now reconsidering their theme-park bookings. Until compelling reassurances are received, the rigour of the entire safety inspectorate is now called into question.
The talk at such times always turns to the imperative of ensuring that such things never happen again. But they probably said that last April, too. - Fairfax NZ