Trap that crushed the Alton Towers girls’ legs
New picture shows the twisted metal of rollercoaster seat after accident as theme park faces millions in fines
THIS is the Alton Towers rollercoaster carriage which crashed so violently that two passengers had to have legs amputated.
The photograph was released yesterday as the theme park admitted responsibility for the disaster last summer, leaving it liable to millions of pounds in fines and compensation.
The image shows how the reinforced metal fender at the front of the carriage on the £18million Smiler ride was rammed back into the legs of passengers as it slammed into a stationary car on the track.
Screaming victims trapped by twisted metal and their safety harnesses waited more than four hours to be freed from the crumpled carriage, which was 25ft in the air and at an angle of 45 degrees.
Leah Washington, 18, of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, and Vicky Balch, 20, from Leyland, Lancashire, were sitting in the middle of the four front-row seats. Both had to have a leg amputated. Their boyfriends Joe Pugh, 18, from Barnsley, and Daniel Thorpe, 28, from Buxton, Derbyshire – who were sitting either side of them – also suffered serious leg injuries, along with Chandaben Chauhan, 49.
In a landmark case, the park’s owners pleaded guilty to health and safety breaches over the catastrophic crash on June 2.
Yesterday the victims and their families were at North Staffordshire Justice Centre to see the park’s owner, Merlin Attractions Operations Ltd, plead guilty to failing to discharge its duty to ensure the safety of visitors.
Now Merlin faces a multi-million- pound fine and potentially millions more in compensation claims from the victims following the Health and Safety Executive prosecution. Warning Merlin bosses before the firm is sentenced next month at Stafford Crown Court, District Judge Jack McGarva said it could receive a fine of ‘no limit’.
He said: ‘This is an extremely serious case where a number of people sustained life- changing injuries. This case involves the culpability on the part of the defendant which exposed the victims to a high likelihood of serious harm.
‘There is no limit to the extent of the harm a court could impose.’
Alton Towers is the first major British theme park whose owners have admitted a criminal breach of health and safety law. It had already accepted responsibility for the crash. Merlin’s counsel Simon Antrobus said: ‘I’m duly authorised to enter a plea of guilty. The company is accepting additional reasonable and practicable measures could have been taken to guard against the safety risk that arose.’
Bernard Thorogood, prosecuting, said the computer controlling the ride was ‘ without fault’, but the weakest link was any human intervention required to operate it.
He said one of the five trains had halted on the rollercoaster, and although the computer showed this, the staff did not notice. They overrode the computer to start a train full of people, which then smashed into the static carriage.
‘Those in the front row suffered the greatest injuries and many of those were life-changing’, said Mr Thorogood. ‘ They were, in many cases, in indescribable pain and their lives and their families’ lives have been turned upside down.’
The 14-loop Smiler rollercoaster was reopened in March. But Merlin saw its shares slide by £100million in the days after the accident at Alton Towers, which takes in around £110million a year.
Miss Balch said last year she was ‘insulted’ after millionaire Merlin chief executive Nick Varney visited her at home and told her how much money the firm lost after the crash.
Shares in Merlin, a FTSE 100 company, closed 11.9p down last night at 435p.
‘Indescribable pain’