Firefighters rescued 15 people from Adventureland Amusement Park’s Wave Twister on Friday evening after the ride stalled about 50 feet in the air in East Farmingdale. Many of the riders were children, and crews used a cherry picker and ladder trucks to reach them.
The response began about 8 p.m., when six fire departments, including East Farmingdale, arrived and worked to bring the riders down one by one. Rescuers unbuckled the passengers, placed a harness on each rider and lowered them to the ground, where paramedics checked them. No injuries were reported at first, though the riders were still being evaluated Friday night.
That rescue mattered because the people stuck inside the two circular cars were not a distant crowd. Heather Bernard said her daughter and two friends were trapped for more than two hours. She said the children had already ridden once, got back on at 6:30 p.m. after the ride ran empty, and then watched it stop again after it ran empty a second time. “They ran the ride twice empty and then they got on,” Bernard said. “That’s when it stopped.”
The ride’s structure helps explain why the wait felt so unnerving. The Wave Twister carries 10 riders in each of two circular cars as they move along a track meant to simulate ocean waves, so the people in the seats were suspended well above the ground while firefighters worked below. Chanelle Bonnard said her two 9-year-old girls were among the riders and said the park had not explained how children were being chosen to come down. “We don’t know how they’re picking which kids to come down. The park isn’t saying anything to the parents at all,” she said.
Bonnard said the ride had broken earlier in the day and that riders had already been stuck for about 40 minutes before a parent called the fire department. She said the children were wearing safety harnesses, but their feet were dangling, and described them as frightened while they waited overhead. Adventureland did not immediately comment on the malfunction Friday night.
The Wave Twister opened in April as part of phase two of Adventureland’s $10 million, five-phase plan to redevelop the back area of the Farmingdale park known as Legacy Corner. It had also been delayed for a year from when it was first announced. The unanswered question now is not whether firefighters got everyone down; they did. It is what stopped the ride in the first place, and whether Adventureland puts it back into service after a night when children had to be lowered from the air one at a time.
