All the Fun of the Fair

03 August 2016 | Updated 01 January 1970

Sunday 31 saw firefighters cheered by crowd as they rescued 19 passengers from ten hanging capsules that had become stuck high off the ground on fairground ride emulating the London Eye which is only a stones=throw away.

The capsules were hanging about 20 metres in the air with six children and 13 adults on board. 38 firefighters were involved.

Local Station Manager Clive Robinson, who was at the scene said: “Crews used an aerial ladder platform which is a bit like a cherry picker to reach the people and bring them back down. It was slow work as we needed to access each cage on the ride individually and ensure they were secure before we moved them from the ride onto our platform and brought them back down to the ground. There were no injuries and everyone was patiently waiting for us to get around to them."

Engineer on hand

Crews also worked with the onsite engineer to manually release the ride’s friction break so the ride could turn around and align the pods with the aerial ladder platform.

Picture: The rescue operation took about three-and-a-half hours to complete

Article written by Cathryn Ellis | Published 03 August 2016