A man who used to work at Dreamworld has spoken out against the ride, which he believes had a design flaw that he had previously witnessed.
Jon Armstrong worked as a ride operator on the ride, Thunder River Rapids, in 1987, and on other rides in 2007.
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News.com.au spoke to Armstrong, who revealed that he and his colleagues witnessed a similar situation, where the raft flipped.
“I was on ‘start-up’ duties for the ride, which involved walking the river bed before the pump started, check the raft inflation pressure and ensuring all rafts were untied,” he said.
“I was unaware this particular morning that one raft had two mooring lines attached by the overnight maintenance crew, the second rope being hidden on the far side of the raft and submerged.
“When the ride started, this raft stuck and caused three other rafts to flip on the conveyor and four more to ‘mount’ the flipped rafts.
“It’s lucky there was no one on board because if there had been, their body parts would have been pushed under the water … and at that part, the water’s deep.
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“Luckily we had not allowed guests in to ride yet but those of us present at the time all agreed that this was a potentially fatal flaw.”
Because of this incident, safety procedures were improved after a thorough investigation. However, Jon Armstrong believes that there should have been an automatic shutdown if the raft didn’t move up the conveyor belt.
He added, “I doubt I’d go on that ride until they changed the format. It needs a redesign.”
The Daily Telegraph reports that the group involved in the tragedy were just five seconds from safety as the ride was coming to an end before the craft flipped, drowning two of the adults, crushing the other two on a conveyor belt, but somehow miraculously throwing the two children to safety.
Police worked through the night, investigating the incident, looking for clues which helped them understand why the ride malfunctioned and said during a press conference that it was a “miracle” the children survived.
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