Fair Day

Many school kids get a day off every year to attend their State Fair. My personal Fair Day is something different, and can't be marked on the calendar in advance. I had a minor version of Fair Day when I read about Eddie the maintenance man at Ruby Pier amusement park in Mitch Albom's Five People You Meet in Heaven.

This year my major Fair Day was set off by Friday's Dallas Morning News front page headline, "Fair officials see tram on horizon". Yikes. The story's subheadlines read, "Exclusive: Aerial cars called safer than those in '79 crash, key to plan", and "Memories of a fatal gondola accident 26 years ago still haunt one witness".

What stunned me was that fairs still had gondola rides in 1979, over a decade after a fatal tram ride accident at the Nebraska State Fair. The images were back. The vivid memory of looking through a pony ride fence at a parade of wailing emergency vehicles rushing into the fairgrounds in Lincoln, and then speeding back out again.

It was the first time I ever went to the fair. My parents picked a gray Sunday morning when it would not be very crowded. We were not on the midway. We were in the 4H animal barns. I think we were watching farmers chase a large pig that got out of its pen and was running around the aisles when we became aware of the sirens. As we went from barn to barn the sirens continued. Eventually we came to a place where the entrance and all the ambulances were visible. As we watched a pony ride go around and around in the dirt we started to hear people say that something must have happened on the midway. All my parents knew to do was keep we three kids from freaking out, and not go to our car to leave the fairgrounds and get in the way of the ambulances. I don't know how long we watched the ponies and the ambulances. It seemed like hours. I can see my little brother and sister riding the ponies. I may not have gone on the ride.

It was difficult to pinpoint the date of the Nebraska ride collapse. I sensed it was after JFK's assassination when I was in third grade. I bet it was closer to sixth grade when I would have felt peer pressure from the neighbor kids because, not only did I not have any Beatles records, I had never been to the State Fair or Disneyland. I was sure it was before my grandma broke her hip the week of the Pierce, Nebraska summer parade and street carnival in 1967.

Nebraska newspapers have online archives going back maybe a week. I spent too much of this weekend Googling and Dogpiling, hunting for the answer. It was in a place I should know by now to check first, the online archives of the New York Times. The midway ride fell in Lincoln Sunday, September 5, 1965. The day after the accident the Times ran an Associated Press story, "2 Killed, 53 Hurt as Towers of Cable Car Ride Topple". It included an AP wirephoto of firemen using a lift to reach passengers trapped in the gondolas, an effort that took nearly an hour.

Two persons were killed and fifty-three injured when two forty-foot steel towers supporting the ride toppled, according to the AP story. I believe several other persons died of their injuries in the following days.

There are significant differences between the accidents at the Nebraska and Texas fairs. The Nebraska ride traveled thirty-five feet above the ground, compared to eighty-five feet in Texas. I have yet to find documentation, but I believe the Nebraska ride was part of a traveling carnival "mobile venue" temporary installation. The Texas skyride was a permanent installation at a fixed site. I read quite a bit about a lawsuit following the Texas collapse, The State Fair of Texas v. The Consumer Products Safety Commission, in a legal article "The Continuing Showdown Over Who Should Regulate Amusement Attraction Safety", but I'm unqualified to comment on any of it. Carnival rides are regulated by the Texas Department of Insurance, Loss Control Regulation. In Nebraska they are regulated by the Nebraska Workforce Development, Office of Safety and Labor Standards.

I don't wonder that Todd Swanson, the witness interviewed in the Dallas Morning News story says he won't go "anywhere with makeshift rides", and he won't go see the planned new Fair Park tram. When he closes his eyes he might still see the man crushed by the gondola. I just see ambulances through a pony ride fence.

According to an Historic Fair Park website timeline about the Texas fairgrounds in Dallas:
1956 Monorail installed in time for State Fair. $400,000 of bond money allocated for Fair Park expansion Aug.-Sept. 1964 Monorail dismantled and “Swiss Sky Ride” erected in its place.
Dec. 1971 State Fair purchases and takes over operation of Swiss Skyride.
Oct. 21, 1979 Swiss Skyride accident results in 1 death and 17 injured fairgoers. Ride is closed down, never to reopen.
Oct. 1985 “The Texas Star,” a huge Ferris wheel, begins operating on the Midway.