The gamecock. (Columbia, S.C.) 1908-2006, August 30, 1999, Page 6, Image 6
Nation & World
Roller coaster accident kills two over weekend
‘I don’t have a sense as to what’s
causing more accidents this year.
I think it’s just a set of coinci
dences. I think the industry is
fundamentally as safe as it’s ever
been.’
Joel Gliff
by John Curran
Assoicated Press
Ocean CfTY, NJ. — Mark Matczak and his two
young children were waiting to board the Wild
Wonder roller coaster when a car that had started out
on its ride suddenly reversed course.
“It was like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s coming back
down,”’ said Matczak, 39, of Tylersport, Pa. “As
quickly as I said that, it hit.”
The accident killed two peopl^ Saturday night, a
39-year-old woman and her 8-year-old daughter.
Jay Gillian, general manager of the amusement
pier where the accident happened, said the victims
were riding in the car that slipped backward and
crashed into another car being loaded to begin the
ride.
Two people who were getting into the second car
suffered minor injuries.
The accident was the latest in several fatal
mishaps this summer at amusement parks across the
nation.
“This season has been quite saddening in that
regard, and it’s certainly not normal,” said Joel Cliff,
spokesman for the International Association of
Amusement Parks and Attractions.
Officials would not speculate on what may have
caused Saturday’s accident.
Representatives of the manufacturer, the
Zamperla Co. of Parsippany, N.J. were summoned to
the park Sunday.
Saturday’s accident brought the total of deaths in
the last week alone to four, while Cliff said the aver
age number of amusement park deaths over the past
two decades has been two per year.
“I don’t have a sense as to what’s causing more
accidents this year. I think it’s just a set of coinci
dences. I think the industry is fundamentally as safe as
it’s ever been,” Cliff said.
A week ago, a disabled 12-year-old boy died on
the Drop Zone ride at Great America park in Santa
Clara, Calif., when he slipped out of a harness.
A day later, a man who had partially wiggled out
of a shoulder harness fell from the Shockwave, a
stand-up roller coaster at Paramount’s Kings
Dominion in Doswell, Va.
On Wednesday, a coaster at Six- Flags Marine
World in Vallejo, Calif., came to a sudden halt and
stranded 28 people for nearly four hours.
New Jersey safety investigators spent Sunday
inspecting the brand new, two-story steel coaster
involved in Saturday’s accident, crawling beneath the
cars and the tracks.
The boardwalk park where the ride is located,
Gillian’s Wonderland Pier, was closed out of respect
for the victims and their families, park officials said.
The Wild Wonder, which opened July 1, was
inspected once before opening and once since by the
state, according to E.J. Miranda, a spokeswoman for
the state Department of Community Affairs, which
regulates New Jersey amusement rides.
Its inaugural runs were attended by New Jersey
Gov. Christie Whitman, who pressed a button to start
the ride, but balked at trying it herself.
She said she was afraid of roller coasters.
New Jersey cracked down on amusement ride
Spokesman, International Association
of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
operators after a spate of accidents in 1997, boosting
the maximum penalty for a safety violation from $500
to $5,000 and making it a crime for riders who ignore
rules or fool around on rides.
The number of serious incidents dropped last
summer, from 25 in 1997 to 16 last year at the state’s
1,400 rides.
$aturday’s deaths were the first deaths this year on
New Jersey amusement rides.
Eght people have been seriously injured in ride
accidents, however.
Amusement ride patrons were leery after the
accident.
“You always think you’re locked in and secure,
but then you hear about something like this and you
go ‘Wow,’” said Gianna Demedio, 10, of Harleysville,
Pa., who has ridden the Wild Wonder.
Bush
from page'5
to be allowed to hunt and protect
themselves.”
But he added that current gun
restrictions should be enforced more
stringently. “There ought to be conse
quences, and those consequences ought
to be called jail,” Bush said.
On July 29, Mark 0. Barton shot
and killed nine people at two day-trad
ing firms in Atlanta before committing
suicide. Barely two weeks earlier, a
gunman killed two women and four
children in their Atlanta home before
killing himself. In May, a 15-year-old
boy opened fire at his high school in
suburban Conyers, wounding six class
mates.
Israel
frontpage 4
would leave them with less than half of
the West Bank.Barak’s predecessor,
hard-liner Benjamin Netanyahu, froze
Wye in November last year, claiming
Palestinian noncompliance.
Barak campaigned on reviving the
accords and trounced Netanyahu in
June elections.Albright is touring the
region beginning Thursday and hopes
to preside over a signing ceremony in
Egypt. Egyptian President Hosni
Mubarak’s top aide, Osama el-Baz was
visiting Israel and the Palestinian areas
on Sunday, meeting with leaders on
both sides to help bridge the gaps.
Irish
from page 4
in its own power base.
The 1998 Good Friday peace accord expected the BRA — which already has
tons of weapons hidden in secret bunkers in the Irish Republic — to disarm in
cooperation with an international commission by next May. But the IRA has
rejected the goal, in the process snarling efforts to form a new Protestant-Catholic
government for Northern Ireland.The IRA last month denied it had authorized any
arms-smuggling efforts after four people were arrested and charged in Florida and
Pennsylvania in connection with weapons being mailed to Ireland.
The Sunday Times said one of the weapons due to be shipped was a Kentucky
made Barrett “light 50” rifle.
The high-velocity, flak jacket-penetrating weapon has already proved to be
one of the IRA’s deadliest weapons. Before its cease-fire, the group used the .50
caliber gun to kill 10 British soldiers and police in single-shot sniper attacks along
Northern Ireland’s border with the Irish RepubUc. The newspaper said MI5 also
believed that the IRA had already received somewhere between 20 and 200 guns
through the exposed network, and probably had developed other sources.
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Proposal hopes
to end bingeing
by Dee-Ann Durbin
Associated Press
East Lansing, Mich. — After too
many drinks, a Cornell University
student falls down a gorge and dies.
At Michigan State University, a
birthday celebration turns tragic after
a student downs two dozen shots of
booze. A Penn State student is found
clinging to life on her 21st birthday,
her blood-alcohol level nearly seven
times Pennsylvania’s intoxication
limit.
Jolted by such recent alcohol
related tragedies, colleges and uni
versities around the country are plan
ning aggressive campaigns this fall to
curb heavy drinking among students.
That means alcohol-free dorms
and parties, agreements with local
bars, advertising blitzes, notification
of parents when their underage chil
dren are caught drinking, anything to
get across the message that drinking
can be dangerous.
“Our goal is not to do away with
alcohol consumption, that’s not a
realistic goal, but to bring a level of
social responsibility to alcohol,”
Penn State President Graham Spanier
told the National Press Club last
week.
Throughout the school year,
other materials will focus on drink
I-- -
ing’s possible consequences, includ
ing drunken driving, missed classes
and increased risk of sexual assault
and other crimes.
Although statistics indicate that
college drinking is down from a
decade ago, several recent studies
show that binge drinking, five or
more drinks in one sitting for men,
four for women, remains a serious
problem.
A 1998 Harvard University study
found that 42.7 percent of students
had been binge drinking in the two
weeks before they were surveyed,
down only slightly from 44.1 percent
in a 1993 Harvard study.
The recent study’s author, Henry
Wechsler of the Harvard School of
Public Health, says binge drinking
rates vary wildly depending on the
campus, from 1 percent to nearly 80
percent of students.
But one constant, he says, is that
students usually believe drinking
rates are higher than they actually
are.
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