What you should know about the Ohio State Fair accident that left one person dead and several others injured. Dana Branham/The Enquirer
CINCINNATI — Carnival-ride deaths may be rare, but states such as Ohio — where the Fire Ball broke apart on the Ohio State Fair’s opening night Wednesday in Columbus — have too few inspectors and not enough safety regulations, experts say.
The 18-year-old Marine recruit who died, Tyler Jarrell of Columbus, and seven others ages 14 to 42 who were injured shine a spotlight on the patchwork system of regulation throughout the United States, they say.
“It’s scary, isn’t it? … And it’s messy,” said Mark Hanlon, a Los Angeles-based engineer who works extensively with the amusement-ride industry. “Every state has their own regulation, … and a lot of them don’t have much.”
Between now and mid-September is peak state fair season: In addition to the California, Delaware, Maine, Montana, North Dakota and Ohio state fairs going on now, half of the other states also will have their statewide fairs in the next month and a half.
► Friday: Family of Ohio State Fair victim pursues wrongful death lawsuit ► Thursday: How a day at the Ohio State Fair turned tragic ► Thursday: How often do accidents happen at amusement, water parks?
Ohio has eight inspectors to check amusement rides annually and do spot checks — on-site inspections of how rides are set up and how operators are working the rides —around the state. Those inspectors issued more than 3,700 annual permits in 2015, the most recent year for which numbers are available.
“When it comes to Ohio, do the math and look at how many hours do they get to do real inspections,” Hanlon said.
No charges in Texas carnival-ride death investigation ► September: 8 taken to hospitals after fair ride malfunctions in Tennessee ► August 2016: Funnel cakes and murder at the Iowa State Fair
Officials with that organization did not return messages seeking comment.
Rides are safe, and state regulators do a good job at keeping operators on their toes, industry officials say, even while acknowledging the inconsistent standards across the USA.
“What happened in Columbus was tragic, yes, but it is a very rare event for us,” said Bob Johnson, president of the Outdoor Amusement Business Association. The Florida-based trade group represents operators of rides that move from place to place.
► August 2016: Child falls from Pennsylvania roller coaster ► August 2016: Girls injured in Ferris wheel accident improving, mom says
“We work very hard with other organizations, manufacturers and our owner/operator members to raise the safety bar,” Johnson said. “The owners are the ones with the most at stake, after all. These are family-owned businesses for the most part, and the last thing they want to do is hurt someone.”
The sparse number of inspectors and low fine levels are par for the course for much of the country, experts say.
In some places, oversight is even less than in Ohio. California, Florida and New Jersey are cited as having very tough safety standards.
In California, the ride inspection agency is completely self-sustaining through inspection fees and fines.
In Texas, the regulation is very lax — even less than in Ohio.
“This is really tragic because I know some of these guys, but it still shows how inconsistent it can be,” said Ken Martin, an amusement ride safety analyst and inspector from Richmond, Va. “What happened in Ohio this week shows the tip of the iceberg when it comes to this stuff.”
The industry and state regulators often have a cozy relationship, Martin said. Some former officials move into private inspecting businesses or even jobs with bigger ride operators.
► August 2016: Water slide death casts shadow on summer tradition ► July 2016: Hemp Dawgs break food barrier at Kentucky State Fair
“There’s a lot of sleeping together that goes on in this industry,” Martin said.
Johnson, who is chairman of Florida’s amusement ride advisory council, denied that even as he acknowledged that industry officials work closely with state legislators and regulators.
“We are always working to encourage higher safety levels,” he said.
► July 2016: Celebrating Iowa State Fair’s legendary butter cow ► June 2016: Famous state fair foods at American restaurants
The current state-level system began in the 1980s when Congress turned over regulation of amusement parks and mobile-ride operators to states. That left state officials scrambling to create standards.
A few recommended inspection standards have been created since, but many states don’t follow those closely or only use parts of those recommendations.
Ohio rules haven’t changed much since the 1990s even after these serious accidents:
• May 29, 2011. Dr. Amgad William Abdou, who lived in the Cleveland area at the time, was paralyzed after falling on a ride at an indoor inflatable park called Pump It Up in Cleveland. State inspectors did not fully check whether park employees knew how to instruct patrons on safety.
• June 12, 2010. Douglas Johnson, 54, of Greensburg, Pa., died nine days after an inflatable slide collapsed at a Kids Fun Day before a Cleveland Indians game.
• Aug. 13, 2003. Greyson Yoe, 8, of Madison Township, Ohio, was electrocuted in an improperly wired bumper car at the Lake County Fair and died less than a month later. Courts eventually found Ohio Agriculture Department inspectors liable.
At least 22 fatalities have been associated with amusement attractions nationwide since 2010, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is investigating Wednesday’s accident. It estimated 30,900 injuries associated with amusement attractions required an emergency room visit in 2016.
Earlier this year, Kansas voted to toughen its rules following the death of the son of a state legislator there. But lawmakers also voted to delay implementation of the new law until next year.
Overall, the current system relies too much on owners’ self-policing, Hanlon said.
In 2009, an Ohio Agriculture Department official said ride owners have the responsibility to set up rides correctly, the (Hamilton, Ohio) Journal-News reported after Tyler Maloney, then 11, of Middletown, Ohio, escaped serious injury June 27, 2009, when a large inflatable slide on which he was sitting was picked up in a gust of wind, flipping several times.
► September 2015: Fair stage collapse damages before Indiana court ► September 2015: Man dies working on Tulsa state fair ride
At the Ohio State Fair, all rides were shuttered Thursday on orders of the governor, but 28 low-impact amusements were reinspected and allowed to resume Friday. More than half remained closed.
Ohio’s fair is one of the biggest state fairs in the country, drawing 900,000 people last year.
“Maybe this will lead to a closer examination of what goes on there in Ohio,” Martin said.
Contributing: The Associated Press. Follow James Pilcher on Twitter: @jamespilcher
The snake and the Ohio woman it was wrapped around had not always been at odds.
The 911 dispatcher who answered the woman’s frantic call on Thursday was able to discern some aspects of the interspecies relationship that had suddenly and dangerously soured.
There had been some sort of rescue, the woman said after giving her location in the Ohio city of Sheffield Lake and a brief, breathless description of the predicament she was in, according to a 911 recording obtained by the Elyria, Ohio-based Chronicle-Telegram. The woman had brought the 5½-foot-long snake into her home along with another snake in recent days.
They joined a growing assemblage of legless reptiles. The woman possessed nine other snakes, presumably also rescues, but they weren’t loose and weren’t attacking people at the moment, she told the dispatcher.
What was unclear is where the woman’s rescue plan went so badly awry.
Now, she said, she was on the ground, with an unyielding boa constrictor wrapped around her body.
“Oh, please. I have a boa constrictor stuck to my — my face,” she told the dispatcher.
The dispatcher seemed incredulous: “Ma’am, you have a what?”
“A boa constrictor,” the woman confirmed.
“You have a boa constrictor … You’re outside with a boa constrictor stuck to your face?”
The dispatcher notified paramedics, then tried to figure out more about the woman’s predicament, which was clearly petrifying her.
“Please hurry,” she screamed. “He has a hold of my nose.”
The snake wasn’t venomous, the woman said. And it wasn’t cutting off her breathing or circulation — at least not yet. But there was “blood everywhere.”
“Oh, God, hurry, please. He’s around my waist and he has my nose.”
The woman may have been in more danger than she or dispatchers thought at the time.
A 2015 study showed that boa constrictors don’t actually suffocate their prey, as The Washington Post’s Elahe Izadi reported. Their squeezing cuts off the unwitting victim’s blood flow, stopping oxygen from getting to the brain. Victims quickly lose consciousness, then die.
The scientists documented the snake-induced circulatory arrest in perhaps the creepiest science experiment ever YouTubed.
Such intricacies were probably far from the woman’s mind as she pressed the dispatcher to hurry.
Near the end of the recording, she went silent for a while, but then sirens could be heard, growing louder, getting closer.
Sheffield Lake Fire Chief Tim Card told the Chronicle-Telegram what first responders found when they reached her.
“It was wrapped around her neck and biting her nose and wouldn’t let go,” Card said. “They had to cut its head off with a knife to get it to let go of her face.”
While it appeared to be the first snake attack of this magnitude in Sheffield Lake, such dangerous interactions are not uncommon, according to Born Free, an organization that advocates against owning exotic pets such as snakes.
The organization catalogued more than 471 attacks by snakes between 1995 and 2013. The numbers are probably higher, the organization said, if unreported incidents are factored in.
“Clearly this is a national problem,” Adam Roberts, then executive vice president of Born Free USA, said in a news release. “We are seriously concerned about the epidemic of owning deadly snakes. Large snake ownership remains unregulated or poorly regulated across the country. . . . Snakes are wild animals who cannot be trained and at any time can display their normal wild behavior, which may include a poisonous bite or strangulation.”
The Sheffield Lake woman was rescued, but it’s unclear what became of her snakes and of her.
Police said no report had been taken; it’s not known whether the woman faced charges or had her 10 remaining snakes removed. Boa constrictors are not listed as one of the dangerous wild animals prohibited under the Ohio Dangerous Wild Animal Act. (Other snakes, including various species of anacondas and pythons, are on the list.)
All a reporter found at the scene were the remnants of what had transpired: an empty glass cage on the sidewalk and a small puddle of blood in the driveway.
