Woman injured in free fall on O.C. Fair ride

Coral Wilson

A 30-year-old woman was injured on a 110-foot free-fall ride at the

Orange County Fair on Sunday when one of the nets didn’t catch her.

The Adrenaline Drop ride was shut down at 12:40 p.m., immediately

after the woman from La Canada Flintridge made an uncontrolled drop

into the ride’s second safety net and made a hard landing on the foam

pad below, said Becky Bailey-Findley, fair general manager.

“She went through or was not caught by the first net,”

Bailey-Findley said. “The second safety net caught and enveloped

her.”

The woman was transported to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana,

where she was listed in stable condition. Her vital signs were

normal, she was conscious, had good movement and didn’t appear to

have any broken bones, Bailey-Findley said.

Officials from the state Division of Occupational Safety and

Health will inspect the ride today, Bailey-Findley said. The fair is

closed Mondays.

“They will go over everything to find out why,” she said. “The

ride will not open reopen until it has been thoroughly investigated

and deemed to be safe and problems like this don’t happen again.”

This is the second year the ride has been at the Orange County

Fair, she said. It is the only ride that Amusement Management

International of Carrollton, Texas operates at the fair, officials

said. The fair gets most of its rides through Ray Cammack Shows of

Laveen, Ariz.

“It’s one of a kind, it’s rather new and it doesn’t have a

history,” Bailey-Findley said. “It hasn’t had an accident like this

before.”

A number of fair vendors said they had wanted to ride the

Adrenaline Drop before the incident.

“We had some salesmen here who were going to do it, but now we are

thinking twice,” said Tim Krebs, salesman at Spa Depot.

“I question all the rides,” said Mike Hendricks of B.B.Q. Corn on

the Cob, who has been working at the fair for 35 years. “You see

little things, but this rarely happens,”

By 8 p.m. Sunday, when the ride would normally be going strong,

the mood was somber, as many fairgoers had already heard that

something had happened.

It was a very different scene from Friday and Saturday nights

when, Krebs said, every time a person fell, the operator would

announce over a loudspeaker, “Hits the target every time.”

* CORAL WILSON is the news assistant and may be reached at (949)

574-4298 or by e-mail at coral.wilson@latimes.com.