John Tedesco

Kiddie Park in San Antonio reported several children were injured in ride mishaps

Kiddie Park, the troubled children’s attraction that I wrote about in June, is under new ownership. Reporter Elizabeth Allen covered the reopening yesterday of the remodeled park. There’s also a neat slideshow by photographer Lisa Krantz of kids having a blast.

The decades-old rollercoaster, which suffered structural failures on at least two occasions and knocked a boy’s teeth out in 2004, has been sold for scrap metal.

My stories about Kiddie Park and other theme parks in San Antonio were based on a database of ride injuries reported to the Texas Department of Insurance. The Express-News posted the data online, so everyone can look up the safety record of any carnival or theme park in Texas.

Here’s a recording of my radio interview last week with KTSA’s Paul Alexander.

We talked about a San Antonio Express-News investigation of the thrill ride industry, and how the public can check a little-known government database that tracks amusement ride injuries in Texas. The Express-News posted the injury data online for anyone interested in checking the safety record of a theme park or carnival.

Kiddie Park in San Antonio reported several children were injured in ride mishaps

Many readers who commented about our story that examined ride malfunctions at Kiddie Park in San Antonio reflected on their love for the old park, and their hope that its woes can be addressed.

Here are a few examples:

Kiddie Park holds a special place in my heart, but I was fearful taking my children there in the 1980′s due to exposed moving parts, evidence of inadequate repairs, and minimal passenger restraints. Complete overhauls by the most competent professionals could never bring many of the antiquated attractions my father rode in the 1920′s and I rode in the 1950′s to modern safety standards. Good fortune alone has spared more serious injuries; I regret not acting as a concerned citizen to prevent the trauma that has been suffered by innocent children. — Alfred E. Neuman

(more…)

Texas Insurance Commissioner Mike Geeslin praised one of our stories about thrill ride injuries and criticized another in this letter to the editor published today.

Nice to see Brooks Egerton at the Dallas Morning News used our new database of amusement ride injuries to check the safety record of the Texas Giant rollercoaster at Six Flags Over Texas. In his blog post today, Egerton discussed how the Texas Giant is closed and he was quickly able to check whether people had been seriously hurt on the ride.

You can search the data for ride names — here’s a list of injuries for the Texas Giant.

This archived story was posted online for our investigation of the thrill ride industry, and it links to internal documents at Fiesta Texas. The documents reveal how park officials were still working out the kinks of the flagship wooden rollercoaster, the Rattler, after the park’s grand opening in 1992. They tracked hundreds of injuries that were never reported to state officials.

Kiddie Park in San Antonio reported several children were injured in ride mishaps

Our second story about the safety record of amusement parks in Texas focused on Kiddie Park, a San Antonio landmark that opened in 1925 but has fallen on tough times. In at least three incidents, the park’s aging rides malfunctioned or broke with scared children on board. One 6-year-old boy knocked his teeth out in a rollercoaster accident.

Ten years ago (wow, I’m getting old) I wrote a series of stories about the safety record of San Antonio’s major theme parks — Six Flags Fiesta Texas, SeaWorld San Antonio, and Splashtown. I learned state officials keep a little-known database that tracks amusement-ride injuries in Texas.

The database isn’t perfect. The injuries are self-reported by parks, and there’s missing cases of devastating, bone-breaking injuries, as my story published today points out. And the injury reports are written by ride owners, so it’s their version of events.

Despite the limitations, the injury data can be an interesting starting point for someone who’s wondering, just how safe is my local theme park or carnival?

Over the years, B.J. Morris, the friendly amusement-ride administrator at the Texas Department of Insurance, has e-mailed me updates to the data. Meanwhile, the data geeks at the Express-News have been doing a good job posting public data online for readers to slice and dice. Last year, we posted a salary database of city employees and it was wildly popular. It got me to thinking, maybe I need to stop hoarding that ride injury database on my computer’s hard drive and put that puppy in the public realm.

Here’s the result: A database of amusement ride injuries that’s available to everyone. For the first time, you can go online and look up injuries by ride owner and injury type. Many reports describe minor bumps and scrapes. But one thing that struck me was the sheer variety of painful ways people get hurt at theme parks and carnivals. This report describes a 10-year-old girl who got her finger caught in a gate at Six Flags Over Texas.

Her fingertip was amputated.

You can check the safety record of Texas theme parks and carnivals by searching a unique database of 1,800 reports detailing broken bones, chipped teeth and other injuries.

Officials at the Texas Department of Insurance collect injury reports from amusement ride owners and type the information into a database. We obtained a copy of the data and posted it online this afternoon. The major parks include Six Flags and SeaWorld.

The data is part of a story scheduled to be published this Sunday in the San Antonio Express-News that examines the safety-record of the thrill-ride industry. More to come.