Fatal monorail accident at WDW

[disneynutsx4]

This is terrible news and our condolences go to the family of the young man who lost his life, as well as to his co-workers involved. One thing is certain - no one, not the NTSB, the Orlando police, or any other potential investigative agency, will do a better job of finding out what happened than the Disney people, and whatever the cause they will do what's necessary to prevent this from happening again.

 

[Shan-man]

I have just read the best theory I've seen to explain what might have happened. Assuming Pink was finished for the day, the pilot would have proceeded out of the TTC and pulled far enough forward on the Epcot-bound beam to clear the switch to transfer over to the MK Express beam in order to head off to the monorail barn. For some reason, Pink must have been cleared to back without the switch being thrown. Chances are neither Pink's pilot or the control tower were aware of the mistake until far too late. I also suspect that the accident avoidance system (and the two empty block rule) are not in force when switching beams.

 

[loveDmouse]

I don't believe there is any automation in the monorails. The times I rode up front I was surprised by the lack of technology... they are about as advanced as the boat launches! Very manual.

Interesting. Thanks Shan! I have never ridden up front yet. Not sure I want to now though.

That makes two of us... and I just read in one of the articles about the accident, that there's an emergency feature that stops the monorail if there aren't two "points" between monorails. It can be manually over-ridden by the driver, though.

Weird.
And terribly sad.

Rose

Glad I am not the only one who thought that. Interesting how they work.

 

[loveDmouse]

They just showed it on the local news here in Va but didn't really say anything we didn't already know.

It will be interesting to find out the results of the investigation.

 

[loveDmouse]

Some more info is leaking out on other parts of the DIS and other Disney-centric websites. The killed pilot was apparently named Austin Wuennenberg. If you do a search on Facebook you can see his picture. According to video posted on ScreamScape.com, the accident happened IN the TTC on the Epcot-bound track. The video is a bit disturbing, so you may not want to view it... it is taken mere moments after the wreck and shows CMs attempting to communicate with the pilot and the clearly shaken family who was on-board. There is also a lot of buzz suggesting that one monorail overshot the station and was cleared to BACK toward the TTC by central monorail control. So the killed pilot was (if this story is true) the one sitting still in the station! That would account for the emotional distress of the uninjured pilot, which was severe enough that he (or she) was taken to the hospital. Can you imagine!? This guy was sitting in his cockpit at 2am, maybe catching 40 winks waiting for the beep that clears him to leave the station when when the approach of a familiar whine rouses him only to see a monorail careening toward him! Or the torture of the other pilot who was trapped in his cockpit outside the station, knowing that he had crashed into another train and could now do nothing as rescue workers tried to free the other pilot, and then to discover his co-worker was killed! It wouldn't have been until they cleared the scene that they could move the trains to get the other head unit into the station to recover the backing pilot. That would sure account for a ton of emotional distress! So the pics posted earlier are after they moved the trains to recover the surviving pilot, and to pick the cars off the rail with a crane. Simply awful.

The video is hard to watch. So I guess the trains hit outside the station and they somehow backed them back up so they could get to the driver???
The one picture shows the trains outside of the station but the video is in the station?
Scary stuff. I hope they release the findings of the investigation. I am sure everyone who has ridden the monorail would like to know what happened.

 

[Cheloconnell]

Why do I have this feeling that the public will never know the real reason and it will be covered up by Disney....

I feel very sorry for Austin's family.

 

[Shan-man]

I think the accident happened inside the station and the video was shot just moments after impact. If the crash had happened outside, by time the train had been moved the TTC would have been covered with security escorting cameras away post-haste. I suspect the photo of the crashed cars outside was quite a bit later as they moved the trains to remove the other pilot.

Here is a graphic showing the operations area in question.

At the right you can see the switch that would put the Epcot train on the MK Express beam.

 

[PixyDusted]

This is completely TRAGIC. My heart is aching for the cast member who lost his life (and at such a young age), his family and friends.

 

[BLT_BobbyComics]

Why do I have this feeling that the public will never know the real reason and it will be covered up by Disney....

I feel very sorry for Austin's family.

Personally, somethings just are not our RIGHT to know what happened. A man died, we dont need to know every single gory detail. Besides that, the young man who died needs a little privacy, but in this day and age of "We have the right because of first admendment" I am sure he will get none.

 

[Shan-man]

Bobby, I'm glad you began your post with "personally", since that tags it as opinion and makes it easier for me to disagree without foment. I have an opinion too, wanna hear it, here it go! While I certainly agree that nobody needs to know the "gory details" about this tragedy (in the same way nobody needed to see pictures inside Princess Di's limo!) but I disagree that we don't deserve to know what went wrong, and to know that the proper measures are taken to prevent it happening again. We deserve to know this as much as we deserve to hear the reports from the NTSB after an airline crash. Disney is in a very public business and makes safety decisions that affect tens-of-thousands of people every day. If there is no transparency, then there is no reason to believe they are making those decisions in the best interest of the public and not their bottom line.

As for the young man's privacy, I hope my posting his name and suggesting folks could see a picture of him on Facebook were seen as invasive. Frankly, my heart broke all the more knowing just these few snippets about him and it makes me feel a stronger connection to the tragedy, and more sincere about my desire to pray for his friends and family. I certainly didn't do it for any lurid or sensationalist reasons... but you'd have to have spent some time around here to know that such motivations are just not in me.

 

[freshlybarked]

It is sad. My DH and I were there that day and rode that monorail in the late afternoon. If you go often enough, as we, do you almost think of the employees as people you know on some level. We always try to talk to them and thank them for their friendliness. They all have hard jobs greating the public day in and day out with a smile.

Not that this has any bearing on the accident, but my husband mentioned that day that the monorails seemed to be overshooting their stops a little and had to back up. Not noticible unless you ride them a lot. It's just one of things you mention while riding, but don't think of until later. I still say, although 1 death is one too many, Disney has a pretty fantastic record with the number of people that they carry on monorails, boats and buses ever day. Shan-Man is correct that it is important that the reason be found and if a problem and not just a terrible accident, it should be fixed.

 

[loveDmouse]

Personally, somethings just are not our RIGHT to know what happened. A man died, we dont need to know every single gory detail. Besides that, the young man who died needs a little privacy, but in this day and age of "We have the right because of first admendment" I am sure he will get none.

We don't want gory details we just want to know what happened to cause the accident and what they will do to fix the problem as to hope it doesn't happen again.

 

[ntsammy5]

Oh just forget it - lots of new members abound

 

[liv luvs disney]

Bobby, I'm glad you began your post with "personally", since that tags it as opinion and makes it easier for me to disagree without foment. I have an opinion too, wanna hear it, here it go! While I certainly agree that nobody needs to know the "gory details" about this tragedy (in the same way nobody needed to see pictures inside Princess Di's limo!) but I disagree that we don't deserve to know what went wrong, and to know that the proper measures are taken to prevent it happening again. We deserve to know this as much as we deserve to hear the reports from the NTSB after an airline crash. Disney is in a very public business and makes safety decisions that affect tens-of-thousands of people every day. If there is no transparency, then there is no reason to believe they are making those decisions in the best interest of the public and not their bottom line.

As for the young man's privacy, I hope my posting his name and suggesting folks could see a picture of him on Facebook were seen as invasive. Frankly, my heart broke all the more knowing just these few snippets about him and it makes me feel a stronger connection to the tragedy, and more sincere about my desire to pray for his friends and family. I certainly didn't do it for any lurid or sensationalist reasons... but you'd have to have spent some time around here to know that such motivations are just not in me.

You are such a well-articulated individual!

 

[PixieDust32]

We just got back from WDW and we were in Epcot last night we stayed until 11:00PM we rode the same monorail from Epcot to the Magic Kingdom around 12:00AM, we were gonna go to DHS for the EMH but it took a long time to leave Epcot so we went back to the Fort and we didn't hear anything until later after we checked out, I was in shock and very sad.

 

[PixieDust32]

We notices that too. We rode the monorail to MK on July 3 and we stopped about 3 times from the Ticket Center to the MK. But you're right one incident in 38 years.

 

[PixieDust32]

............

 

[PixieDust32]

the video shows de accident on the boarding platform and the pics on the news show de monorails on the rails above the bathroom.

 

[bigdisneydaddy]

Sometimes its best just to take a deep breath, step back and let the experts investigate. I am confident that the amount of oversight will be adequate to come up with a cause and a solution. At this point it is pure speculation what happened, in the end I am sure we will know the facts.

 

[Abagpiper5]

At work, I was talking to 2 old CM’s about what happen with the Monorail. During the discussion, another person reminded us that there was a pretty big recent layoff at Disney and if maybe there wasn’t enough people monitoring the system.
I’m sure that this horrible accident is just that, a horrible accident.