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Incident on The Smiler 02/06/2015

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Yes, the injuries are terrible, and I am not even going to try to claimthey arent, that would be irresponsible and if im honest competely disgusting. However, the thing a lot of peoplle in the GP are forgetting is that there were a lot of peculiar circumstances surrounding the incident. It wasnt as simple as a car being sent by accident I dont think, and the press dont seem to be respecting that, or the victims at all. Many keep trying to intrude on the families of the victims, which is obviously wrong, as well as trying to put pressure on Varney so he cracks. The media, in my eyes, do seem to be making out like the Towers were built by the devil and deserve to be shut down (not literally)
 
The park have just confirmed on social media that they will remain closed tomorrow, could we see an opening on Monday?
 
It is again refreshing to see such positive comments towards them on their social media, I'm hoping that it won't be too long before they can reopen again and all this ridiculous media attention can begin to dissipate.
 
Oh yeah haha sorry I didnt mean that I meant the ride ;) fair point, and thanks for pointing it out
 
I am confused by the lawyers saying that one of the injured is in a critical condition. That would suggest she is in danger, and I think would be much worse than 'life changing', or even 'serious'. It would indicate that she has got worse since she went into hospital. I hope that this isn't the case.

Regarding the Kay Burley interview I stopped watching after 5 mins as it was unpleasant, but she has done far worse things in the past. A few years ago she told volunteers searching for missing child April Jones that the case had been updated to a murder investigation - live on air.
 
The way they keep deciding the day before whether the park will be open or not is starting to seem a bit weird. Why not just say, 'following Tuesday's horrific accident, the park will be closed until at least ____,' and then extend that date, if necessary, closer to the time. It just comes across like they're not sure what they are doing. Surely they are doing something whilst they are closed (training etc) and they must have some idea of how long that will last (to be able to give a minimum time frame, I mean).
 
I would say that everything I've posted off Associated Press and other news agencies has been far more factual and unsensationalist - how the media outlets (ie TV news and the papers) than choose to spin that information, or how rigorously they check their sources (like 'Fred Bloggs who was in the queue for the ride' etc), is another matter. They all play to their primary demographic of viewers/readers and give them the news spun in the way they think they want it.

It's a bit 'catch-22'..
The public demand information, and have platforms like twitter now to jump onto for instant 'news'. Competition among news outlets is fierce and many papers suffering declining readership (in reality they're terrified the public are turning away from them), so they feel they have to be 'first' or get a scoop to feed the public demand they perceive to see even if the facts are non-existent yet or turn out to be completely wrong.
On the flip side, if they are 'slow' in breaking the news to get it as factual as possible, they get slated for rolling with effectively nothing and being behind everyone else with a story. They can't really win in a lot of ways.

However in my opinion that doesn't defend shoddy journalism, or a lack of understanding the subject or scaremongering where it simply isn't due.
Unfortunately some of the worst offenders of the last frequently seems to be other members of the general public on twitter and the like now, rather than the press necessarily.
 
TheBeast said:
Yes, the injuries are terrible, and I am not even going to try to claimthey arent, that would be irresponsible and if im honest competely disgusting. However, the thing a lot of peoplle in the GP are forgetting is that there were a lot of peculiar circumstances surrounding the incident. It wasnt as simple as a car being sent by accident I dont think, and the press dont seem to be respecting that, or the victims at all. Many keep trying to intrude on the families of the victims, which is obviously wrong, as well as trying to put pressure on Varney so he cracks. The media, in my eyes, do seem to be making out like the Towers were built by the devil and deserve to be shut down (not literally)
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Nick Varney has, multiple times, been able to put that message across through interviews on different broadcasters. I don't think the public care whether it was 'a lot of peculiar circumstances surrounding the incident' or not though. They care about the fact that despite all of the safety systems present already and the training given, the ride was still not able to prevent an incident of this magnitude occurring. Whether it was human error, technical malfunction or otherwise - it should not have happened. Even by Nick Varney's own admission, he said that the safety of the ride wasn't adequate otherwise this wouldn't have happened. I appreciate that in everyday life it is impossible to eliminate risk entirely but as Nick said himself, zero adverse events is what they're aiming for and they failed in that.

Kimberley said:
The park have just confirmed on social media that they will remain closed tomorrow, could we see an opening on Monday?
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I'd imagine so. I think a lot it will depend on whether or not the staff on these days are trained sufficiently and whether the trains have already been removed from the park (which I'd assume they would be by now).

Kimberley said:
It is again refreshing to see such positive comments towards them on their social media, I'm hoping that it won't be too long before they can reopen again and all this ridiculous media attention can begin to dissipate.
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Again, I feel we're downplaying the seriousness of this situation here. It's easily arguable that this story is in the public interest and therefore the 'attention' garned by the story is surely expected. Unfortunately, the poor reporting highlighted by previous posts is also expected and would be present with any story of this type (such as the excellent example given by Jamie G) and difficult for any of us to change.
 
EmilyJEG said:
The way they keep deciding the day before whether the park will be open or not is starting to seem a bit weird. Why not just say, 'following Tuesday's horrific accident, the park will be closed until at least ____,' and then extend that date, if necessary, closer to the time. It just comes across like they're not sure what they are doing. Surely they are doing something whilst they are closed (training etc) and they must have some idea of how long that will last (to be able to give a minimum time frame, I mean).
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They probable have Little idea when they can open the Park, they are probably waiting for health and safety to say it's safe to open. Also lets face it, if you were at Alton towers today, would you be trying to see over the fences to look at the smiler. They probably don't want the negativity on social media again, just look at when it crashed, the news was using Twitter as their source, which just ended up with random speculation. I think it should open by Wednesday but that is just a guess because they have hundreds of staff that would need training which could take weeks.
 
Leah said:
They probable have Little idea when they can open the Park, they are probably waiting for health and safety to say it's safe to open. Also lets face it, if you were at Alton towers today, would you be trying to see over the fences to look at the smiler. They probably don't want the negativity on social media again, just look at when it crashed, the news was using Twitter as their source, which just ended up with random speculation. I think it should open by Wednesday but that is just a guess because they have hundreds of staff that would need training which could take weeks.
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The Prohibition Notice HSE have issued is only for The Smiler, the decision to close the park is entirely Merlin's.
 
Just to clear something up, would it be the HSE that determine when the park reopens, or Merlin's? Different people are saying different things, or do we not know?
 
I expect that park can open once thise cars are removed, without the Smiler operating...maybe they will wait until the HSE has left the park though. I remember they said they would open it once skmething had happened, I just cant remember what
 
Leah said:
...Also lets face it, if you were at Alton towers today, would you be trying to see over the fences to look at the smiler.
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No, there'd be nothing to see. I think if they had opened too soon there'd have been news reporters standing in front of The Smiler spouting nonsense, but it's been a few days now and I don't think they'd bother doing that now.

But that's not the point... surely they knew they'd be closed a few days at least, so why not just say so instead of 'check back tomorrow'? I don't expect them to know for certain when they are reopening but taking it day by day just seems a bit disorganised. If they would give some indication (of the minimum period they expect to be closed) then people could go about changing their plans rather than leaving it until the last minute.
 
Possible they're erecting barriers to prevent anyone seeing into that area from any angle as well as deep cleaning the concrete and pathways of blood :/
 
Gojira said:
Possible they're erecting barriers to prevent anyone seeing into that area from any angle as well as deep cleaning the concrete and pathways of blood :/
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You'll still be able to see it from the top of the towers and Oblivion.
 
EmilyJEG said:
But that's not the point... surely they knew they'd be closed a few days at least, so why not just say so instead of 'check back tomorrow'? I don't expect them to know for certain when they are reopening but taking it day by day just seems a bit disorganised. If they would give some indication (of the minimum period they expect to be closed) then people could go about changing their plans rather than leaving it until the last minute.
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I fully agree. In that respect the park has handled the situation quite poorly, the park should have known that they would not be open until next week at the earliest before today.

It's not really fair on people who have planned trips / holidays around a visit to the park.
 
We don't know what the park are doing internally each day or what they deem as the right time to reopen. It's not something you can easily call a timeframe for.

A closure of this length is completely unprecedented in the industry really. Parks have seen fatalities on rides and yet opened either the next day or day after - so it would have been very hard for Towers to name a reopening date in advance.
 
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