(2) What Really Happened on Goliath? The Six Flags Coaster That Shut Down a Continent’s Rides - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYcDdAb4UzA
Transcript:
(00:00) 200 f feet above the trees just west of Atlanta, there's a roller coaster called Goliath. On Monday the 12th of October, a little before 4 in the afternoon, Nick Mendenhal was standing underneath it. He'd just come off the ride with his son and he was watching the next train come through.
(00:19) What he saw, he told the Associated Press, was a man come up out of his seat. "It looked like he was hovering," he said, because the car was moving underneath him. Cobb County police later put it in one plain sentence. The rider was ejected from the ride and struck other patrons before falling beneath the attraction. He was 42. He didn't survive. Every seat on Goliath has a padded bar that comes down over your lap and locks.
(00:43) It's built so that once the train leaves the station, nobody can open it. Not the rider and not the staff. So, the question everyone has been asking since that afternoon is a simple one. How does a writer come out of a seat like this? This is the story of a school IT manager who coached the robotics [music] team. Of a seat that, according to one mother, kept unlocking an hour earlier.
(01:08) Of a lap bar [music] with no seat belt behind it, of 11 roller coasters switched off across a continent, and of a family who say something else [music] happened first. We've built this from the police statements, the state regulators own words, reporting by the AP and local Atlanta newsrooms, and the people who were there, where their accounts disagree, will tell you.
(01:30) The 3D is a reconstruction, and the exact seat and spot on the track haven't been published, so ours are approximate. And there are no images of the fall itself [music] in this film. Goliath opened in 2006. It was built by Baliger and Mabi Yard, a Swiss company that makes some of the biggest roller coasters in the world. The chain lift takes you up 200 ft.
(01:52) The biggest drop is 175 ft at an angle of 59° and at the bottom, the train is doing 70 mph. There are no loops. Instead, it's a long run of big hills, [music] a tight spiral that turns a full circle and a half, and then a string of smaller hills on the way home. About 3 and 1/2 minutes start to finish. Each train has nine cars. Each car is one row of four seats, 36 riders. Those hills are the point of the ride.
(02:16) A coaster like this is designed so that at the top of each one, the train drops away a little faster than you do. For a moment, you come up off the seat. Fans call it airtime. [music] And the only thing between you and the sky at that moment is the bar across your lap. So, here's how that bar works.
(02:32) At least on coasters like this one, it's a padded shell that sits over your lap and the tops of your legs on a single post that comes up from the floor between your knees. When it's pushed down, it ratchets. Each notch is a click, and each click can only go one way, [music] tighter. Before the train is allowed to leave, the bar has to be down past a minimum point, and the ride's computer checks it.
(02:58) Once the train is out of the station, the lock only lets go when power is applied to release it. On Goliath, the AP reports there's no seat belt and no shoulder bar. The lap bar is the whole system. Hold on to those clicks. We'll come back to them. On Monday, about an hour before it happened, Erica Bilips's son and daughter rode Goliath.
(03:23) She says her son had trouble with the restraint on his seat. It kept locking then unlocking, she wrote. So, he moved to a different seat. She says the train went out with that seat empty and that nobody told her children there was a problem. She confirmed her account to the AP. Investigators haven't said anything about it. Summer Bates was at the park with her husband and their three children.
(03:43) When they rode, she noticed her two older kids kept pushing their bars down tighter. Once she rode it herself, she said she understood why the restraints didn't feel secure. Then at about 2 minutes to 4, the first emergency call came in. Witnesses don't describe it in exactly the same way. Nick Mendenhal says the man came out of his seat, fell head first back into the train, and then left it on the final [music] turn. It felt like slow motion, he said, but it happened in an instant.
(04:14) Logan Connor, who was on the ride with his fianceΓ©, told reporters the man started levitating in [music] the air sideways. The police account comes from interviews with witnesses and employees. [music] He was ejected from the ride and struck other patrons before falling beneath the attraction. Four other riders were hurt.
(04:34) All four, police said, are children. None of their injuries are life-threatening. The train stopped partway around the course. Riders had to climb out and walk down a steep incline to get off. which car he was in, which seat, and exactly where on the track he left it haven't been made public. The next day, police [music] named him Hassan Jihad Iben Karim from Atlanta.
(04:59) He worked at Wesley International Academy, [music] a public charter school in the city. He started there as a technology teacher, became the [music] school's IT manager, and coached the robotics team. A celebration of his life was held on Monday the 19th. His family has a different account of the moments before. A relative was [music] sitting right next to him on the ride.
(05:23) According to his brother-in-law, Joshua Nelson, she says he passed out first [music] and then Nelson told WSBTV, "It went up again and his his latch, I guess, snapped or came came loose." So, there are two stories [music] here and they aren't the same. Some writers say the restraints felt wrong that day. His family says he lost consciousness first. Investigators haven't confirmed either. That night, Six Flags shut nine similar coasters at its other parks out of an abundance of caution.
(05:53) Raging Bull near Chicago, Nitro in New Jersey, Leviathan and Behemoth near Toronto, Fury 325, and Thunder Striker in North Carolina, Orion and Diamondback in Ohio. By Thursday, other parks had joined in, including SeaWorld Orlando with its coaster Mako and Laurand in Montreal. 11 coasters in all, the AP counted, and nine of them came from the same Swiss company with a similar restraint.
(06:24) One of them reopened fast. Six Flags. Magic Mountain in California has a coaster also called Goliath, but it was built by a different company with a different kind of restraint. It was back running within days. Boliger and Mabiard has said it's investigating. Asked questions by the AP, it said it wouldn't comment further until it had a better understanding of what transpired.
(06:46) Outside experts went further. Dennis Spiegel, a theme park consultant, told the AP it was obviously something with the restraint. That's his opinion, not a finding. Brian Avery, a ride [music] safety expert at the University of Florida, said he supports backup restraints like a seat belt. The industry, he noted, argues over whether they slow the lines down.
(07:13) In Georgia, big rides like this are inspected by the [music] Office of the Commissioner of Insurance and Safety Fire. Goliath's last inspection was on the 16th of March this year. Commissioner John King says no violations, deficiencies, citations, or red tags were reported. ABC News got the records for the last 3 years, and Goliath passed [music] everyone. There's one detail in there, though.
(07:35) WSBTV in Atlanta reports that the March records mention bushings needing replacement. A bushing is a small sleeve that lets a moving part turn [music] smoothly. The records don't say where on the ride those bushings were or whether they had anything to do with the seats. Nobody official has explained it.
(07:53) King has said the state won't cut corners, rush to conclusions. His engineers have been at the park around the clock looking at the equipment, the restraints, the electrics, and the staff training records. Under Georgia rules, Goliath stays closed until the state decides when and under what conditions the ride may be permitted to resume operation.
(08:15) The park reopened that Friday for Halloween. Goliath didn't. [music] And there's one more piece of history. In July 2006, Goliath's [music] first summer, a 45-year-old man lost consciousness on the ride and later died. An inspection found the coaster had been working properly and it [music] reopened.
(08:36) So, how does a rider come out of a seat built to hold him? Without a finding from the state, nobody can say. But broadly, there are three ways a lap bar can fail a rider. [music] And each one has happened before somewhere else. These are possibilities, not findings. One, the bar is locked, but not low enough. July 2013 at Six Flags Over Texas.
(08:59) A woman fell from a coaster called the Texas Giant. In the police report, an employee described her restraint as a little high, not as tight as it should be, but the control panel still showed it as secure. The park said its experts found the bar never [music] released. The ride reopened with extra seat belts and a test seat at the entrance. Texas isn't Georgia. That was a different ride from a different maker.
(09:23) Two, the bar is fine, but the system that checks it isn't. In 2022, a 14-year-old fell from a drop tower in Orlando. Engineers hired by the state found he was not properly secured in the seat, primarily due to misadjustment of the harness proximity [music] sensor. [snorts] The sensors that tell the operator a harness is closed had been moved. So, the ride accepted a much bigger gap. It said safe. It wasn't. [music] That was a drop tower with a shoulder harness.
(09:54) Nothing like Goliath except for the question it raises. Three. The bar locks and then something in the lock lets go. That's what Erica Bilips's account sounds like. A bar that kept locking and unlocking. [music] It's also broadly what the family describe the latch coming loose. If that's what happened, it would explain why nine coasters with a similar restraint were shut down so fast.
(10:19) But the state hasn't said that, and neither has the manufacturer. And then there's the question the family raised, which isn't about the bar at all, whether he lost consciousness first and whether that changed how he sat in the seat. The investigators haven't addressed it in public. [music] Here's where it stands.
(10:34) On Wednesday, the 21st of October. What we know, a writer was ejected from Goliath on the 12th of October, and died. Four children were hurt. The ride passed [music] its state inspection in March. It has no backup to the lap bar and 11 coasters were shut down after it.
(10:57) What we don't know, whether his bar was fully locked when the train left, which seat he was in, where on the track it happened, what the bushings note means, and whether he lost consciousness first, where the answers are, with the state's engineers who have the train, with Cobb County police, whose major crimes unit is still investigating, and with Baliger and Mabiard, who designed the bar. Until one of them says otherwise, Goliath stays [music] closed.
(11:21) Nick Mendenhal had been on that same ride about 10 minutes earlier with his son. He was looking up at the final turn when the train came through. It felt like slow motion, he said, but it happened in an instant.
