The first date that ended in disaster on Alton Towers rollercoaster
Staff ‘took 10 minutes to reach teen riders injured in horror smash’
TWO victims of the Alton Towers rollercoaster smash were teenagers on their first date.
Joe Pugh, 18, and Leah Washington, 17, were badly injured when their carriage smashed into the back of an empty car on the 53mph Smiler ride.
friends said the pair started seeing each other only a week ago and had chosen the Staffordshire theme park for their first outing.
Yesterday – as questions were asked about apparent ten-minute delays in reaching the injured – Mr Pugh had surgery on what are understood to be two broken legs.
The extent of Miss Washington’s injuries remained unclear, although she is thought to have had an operation on Tuesday night, hours after the crash.
A source at Alton Towers said staff had been told one rider has lost a leg, and that the resort will remain closed until further notice. Bosses are said to be considering scrapping the £18million ride, which has been dogged with problems since it opened two years ago.
Officially, Alton Towers would only confirm that the attraction will remain closed for a second day today.
Alice Holmes, a friend of Mr Pugh, said she had received a text from the Huddersfield University design student just 35 minutes before the crash.
She realised he had been injured when she spotted his distinctive jacket in TV news pictures.
Miss Holmes, 18, who works with Mr Pugh at a club in their home town of Barnsley, said: ‘I knew Joe was excited to go to Alton Towers. He’s been a few times before and had even been on that ride before I think.
‘He’d been speaking about Leah for a while but they only just started going out about a week earlier. It would have been one of their first proper dates.’
Mr Pugh’s parents, Simon, a 51-yearold production manager, and Julie, 50, said by neighbours to be a teacher, were at his hospital bedside yesterday.
Miss Holmes added: ‘I’ve been told by friends that he has broken both his legs. I’ve known Leah since we were at school together. She is very clever and intelligent and had only just passed her driving test a week ago.
‘I can’t see that anybody else but Alton Towers is to blame for this.’
Miss Washington lives with her parents 49-year-old Ann, known by her middle name Louise, and David, 50, and brother Luke, 20. A 19-year-old woman is being treated with her and Mr Pugh at the royal Stoke Hospital. A 27-year- old man understood to be her boyfriend was airlifted to University Hospital in coventry.
Yesterday witnesses to the incident told of delays in reaching the four seriously injured riders, by which time ‘blood was beginning to drip down on to the floor below’.
Lucy Walter said: ‘The people within the cars were terrified and screaming and shouting to us for help because we were so close to them, It was a good ten minutes before a member of Alton Towers staff arrived.’
Thomas Healy, 26, said: ‘ It seemed to take ages for them to arrive. The 16 people on the carriage were just sitting there trapped. Some were screaming while others were crying.’
An Alton Towers spokesman said the claims were ‘ just wrong’, adding: ‘ Our first responders were on the scene within two minutes and the emergency services were called immediately. They were present within ten minutes. Due to the location of the incident on the site they could not have got to the scene any quicker.’
Industry experts and former staff members suggested that lack of training was an issue. One insider, a rollercoaster consultant, said: ‘Staff are often university students and they are simply not given proper training on these huge rollercoasters.
‘They are told how to press a button to start it and how to stop it but if the software goes wrong, and it occasionally does, there is no back-up in place.’
The Alton Towers spokesman insisted all staff were given extensive training.
‘Dogged with problems’