Iron shark roller coaster evacuation

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]So, just based on the the the the the Why is this a problem? Let's talk about it >> now. Get ready. Here we go.

[00:00:14]>> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Ryan Rabiganic channel. How the heck are you doing today? All right. Today's video, this video of the Iron Shark down there in Galveston, Texas, has been popping up all over the internet. It's been going crazy.

[00:00:29]Why? Why has it been going crazy? It's simply a breakdown. What What's What's the big deal? Well, I want to talk about that. So, I've been to this park once before. It's a nice little park. It's out there on the pier.

[00:00:43]It's the Pleasure Pier out there in Galveston, Texas. So, the Iron Shark roller coaster is a Gershau Euro Fighter. It's got a vertical lift hill.

[00:00:53]It's got a beyond vertical drop. You know, it curls over on the other side.

[00:00:57]It's a Euro fighter that's been installed in lots of other parks out there. Um, I've got a similar Euro Fighter out here called the Monster out there in Adventure Land. So, the model is repeatable. We know about it. So, why is this event making news? Well, that's because of the length and duration that the event took. If you're watching this video, if you're watching in the future, this event took place May 28th, 2026.

[00:01:23]Okay. Basically in the evening time this coaster went up there on it normal dispatch cycle went up to the top looks right about a park area and then it stopped. Uh that's not normal for these type of rides supposed to continue over the top. People in line actually I saw an interview with a person who was actually the next in line and they said that there was a loud bang that came from the bottom of the liftill s came from the liftill area. So, there's really not much on those. I've got video of the lift hill for that particular ride. I've got video of the one from Adventureland. They're pretty much identical with each other. So, a loud bang, then the thing stopped. Uh, I'm going to think that either it broke a gearbox or blew the motor. One of the two. Broke a gearbox, blew the motor.

[00:02:14]Both would cause a loud bang. But typically, bangs are more mechanical.

[00:02:19]That's why I'm leaning heavier towards the gearbox. Anyways, that's not the point of this video. So, it took them once they did that, they had to call in fire and rescue to get people off of there and it took 4 hours to get the people off. So, that brings in like the question like what's the park's normal evacuation procedure to get people off that ride? Well, the Euro Fighters actually come with an evacuation platform mounted right to the side of lift hill. Um there's actually pictures of it. I actually skimmed through some videos and got some still pictures of this evacuation platform sitting right off to the side. Now the news media reported that the the man lift they had to evacuate the people was not working that particular day. So they said man lift which typically I would assume to be a piece of equipment outside of the ride. But in this case it's that lift that's sitting right next to it. It's just a the built-in lift that's also used could be used to help inspect the ride, too. But the realistically, there's a ladder on those things for this. Anyways, the point is that lift wasn't working, which made which means that when this thing broke down, they had to call in fire and rescue to get people off. Now, this is not an ideal situation. The fire truck had to park way outside of the boundary area of the ride, which mean they needed a huge ladder extended way out to the edge to get to people. And that took up a lot of time. Not to mention because that platform that normally goes up to that vehicle can accommodate three, four, five people on it at the same time, which means you have people that can assist with evacuations. If you wanted to, you can have firefighters standing on there. But most time parks don't need that sort of assistance. And you can have mechanics on there. That way you can get up there and unlock the restraints one at a time because you have to safety belt the people because when the restraint comes unlocked, you could slide out. So there's a lot of like you have to capture the people so they don't fall. So there's fall protection involved with this. You know, you put a a positioning harness around the people before you let them off the ride. So realistically, the question is going to boil down to for the park, the question is going to boil down to, did that lift work that morning? So this is evacuation equipment. That's standard on most rides. Rides have evacuation equipment.

[00:04:44]You're supposed to check and make sure that the evacuation equipment works every single day prior to the ride's operation. Now, we've all been there.

[00:04:52]We've all done this. So, I'm not going to harp on the park too much about it.

[00:04:55]We've all done things that didn't go according to plan. I know you could you could plan vacations out to the best.

[00:05:01]You can go do the oil change on your car and say, "We're going to take that vacation. It's going to be awesome. Come that morning to start on your vacation."

[00:05:08]Car doesn't start.

[00:05:09]You started the car yesterday, it ran just fine, but that day it didn't start.

[00:05:13]So the same thing can happen with rides.

[00:05:15]You can check the evacuation stuff in the morning and yes, it works and then later on the afternoon for some reason it stopped working. The bang that they heard could have been something electrical. Maybe they didn't have a backup system to run that platform.

[00:05:28]Maybe it took the electrical out along with it. Not quite sure what's there, but I'm sure the rebuttal of this from the park is going to be they're going to have to prove to the general public a they're gonna have to say what went wrong. Not in detail. They're just going to say like they had x amount of problem which caused the ride to stop in the first place that obviously they're going to have to remedy before they could put the ride back into motion. But then they're going to have to prove to probably local authorities, maybe a governing body, someone along those lines. and they're going to have to say, "Okay, well, we acknowledge that this thing wasn't working. We have this working now. Maybe we have a backup plan." The backup plan might simply just be a man lift, an actual like high reach man lift parked there instead of a fire truck. If that thing still doesn't work by the time they get the ride back up and running. Now, where you really run into a problem is if the park knew it was not working prior to putting the ride into operation. So, their evacuation equipment, and this is a scenario, we don't know this. No one knows this. If the park knew that the evacuation equipment did not work and they still put the ride into operation and they said, "Well, if it really breaks down, we'll just have to call the fire department out." That was an acceptable thing to them to do at the time. H I really doubt that happened, but you never know. You never know. It could have been the thing. So, we're going to have to wait and see what comes out about this. But so basically the reason why this is making the news is just cuz it took so long to get eight people off of there. I think it was actually seven people kids visiting from a class. No one was harmed. No one was hurt. Uh but it took 4 hours to get them off which is by most industry standards for amusement parks is unacceptable.

[00:07:17]Yeah. We uh you typically want to get even if you have to do a full nasty evacuation, you typically want to get people off within a half an hour of calling the evacuation. That's a pretty good time frame to shoot for. Some rides you could do it really fast. This is not one of those rides. It's a very complicated procedure out of position.

[00:07:36]So, this ride's going to take longer, but I'd say half hour, probably 45 minutes to get one of these rides recovered is where the park should aim at to get this thing back up and running. All right. I could see this thing making its way through the media and everyone's just like, "Oh my gosh, oh my gosh." And it's just like, "Ah, this is actually not a big deal, but the park could have done something to avoid it realistically."

[00:07:58]Anyways, like, subscribe, share, do all that stuff downstairs. It does help me out. I do appreciate. If you want to email me, you can email me at ryan ther [email protected].

[00:08:07]And as always, stay off the airgates.

[00:08:10]Bye.