I don’t think anyone could reasonably suggest that Disney didn’t conduct a safety risk assessment prior to use of the Gondola system. Of course a formal safety risk assessment prior to use of the Gondolas. As far as the evac period it was similar to other Evac periods for Gondolas in similar use.Wow.
Keeping up with this thread takes a while.
I’m even more glad after reading the first hand accounts here that this happened at night. I do hope that the accounts by people stuck in the gondolas are getting to accident investigators first and foremost.
Hearing about power issues while stuck, lack of response to potential medical issues in air maybe due to confusion/inexperience of CM, slowness of FD evac, general disorganization during evac are all troubling.
The last ones should have all been handled with a proper, comprehensive, detailed emergency plan. This is literally what Safety Risk Assessment Agencies do for work. The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) provides samples of Safety Risk Assessment Matrices on their website. I imagine Disney will be under scrutiny for the procedures and training - both SOP and emergency- that they have in place for the Skyliner.
The Skyliner is a transportation system open to the public with enough daily capacity to be considered city sized.
Besides the gaps in the emergency response, these reports of system power issues - first potentially in the blue gondola that started the crushing event, and then the gondola speakers/power issues in 3hr+ stopped gondolas - are troubling.
If the power issues are potentially why there was a 3hr+ delay in evac, meaning the emergency evac procedure in the books for this type of incident listed a swift evac of the line by running all gondolas quickly back to another operating hub, and this didn’t occur - that’s a big problem.
Disney execs should be grateful this didn’t occur at noon during 90/100 degree temps. This incident replayed during the daytime is a mind boggling, dangerous scenario.
I would expect a long down time until there is assurance that better procedures are in place and potential power issues have been corrected and tested before re opening to the public.
WDW is one of the safest places on earth for visitors with incredibly low accident rates especially considering the physical and mental health of many of those visitors. They are astoundingly low. To suggest this system was used without formal risk assessment is not reasonable at all.