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Deberg_1990
07-23-2007, 03:26 AM
Didnt see this posted anywhere...

That would have sucked big time to have been stuck inside there. in those tiny pods. what a nightmare...

http://www.kmox.com/pages/704018.php?contentType=4&contentId=707802


Brad Choat, Bob Hamilton & Michael Calhoun Reporting

St. Louis (KMOX News) -- It was a dramatic night at the Gateway Arch on the St. Louis riverfront.

With 200 people inside, the power failed. That stopped the trams to the top in their tracks about 9:15 p.m. Those riders were stranded and so were the dozens of people in the observation area, 630-feet above ground.

There was no panic, just no power to get up or down the Arch. Fire rescue units reached the scene quickly and firefighters made their way to the top to find the stranded in a good mood - just anxious to get down to the ground.

At 10:30, the tram passengers stuck in the south leg trams were brought down to safety. Others in the north leg trams and on the observation deck up top came down next. All the stranded visitors made it out by midnight.

The power outage was limited to the legs of the Arch. The rest of the area never lost power.

Why did the power go out? That has yet to be determined.

Deberg_1990
07-23-2007, 03:31 AM
Then it happened again yesterday afternon..

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/3FF79F9A0ED65FFD8625732100107AB6?OpenDocument

ST. LOUIS — Less than half an hour after park officials declared the Gateway Arch safe and partly operational Sunday afternoon, the lights inside went out, the tram shut down and people started panicking — again.

"Dad, I'm scared! When are they going to rescue us?" a little boy called to his father on an adjacent pod on the tram.

"Sit tight — they're coming," his father called back.

This time, the power was restored in about 15 minutes, unlike the three-hour ordeal visitors had suffered through the night before. Advertisement

Arch Superintendent Peggy O'Dell said workers were investigating damage on the disabled south tram of the Arch, which triggered the brief outage Sunday on the north side.

The Sunday snafu was easier to resolve than Saturday's malfunction. Officials said that on Saturday, a cable that broke in the south leg of the Arch may have toppled onto an electrified railing around 8:45 p.m. and shorted the electrical circuits. Power was restored to the north tram around 11 p.m. Saturday — but the south tram remains out.

About 260 people, including many young children and elderly visitors, were trapped in darkness and heat without access to food, water or restrooms. No one was seriously injured, although it took firefighters and park staffers up to three hours to clear everyone from the monument.

Park officials said the trams, which travel up and down the Arch and consist of eight cars or pods, were never in danger of falling because they are secured by nine cables and need only two or three of those to stay connected. The braided metal cables are replaced every other year, O'Dell said. In fact, a recent engineering study recommended less frequent replacements, O'Dell said.

"It's the first time we can remember a cable ever failing," she said.

O'Dell plans to contact the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the cable manufacturer today to begin investigating why the cable failed. The south tram will remain closed until all of its cables have been replaced, she said.

She stressed that the evacuation plan worked smoothly and that no one ever feared that lives were in danger.

"Every single safety feature worked exactly how it should have worked," O'Dell said.

That gives little comfort to families such as the Kiwalas of O'Fallon, Mo. Erik Kiwala took his fiancée and their six boys, ages 4 to 16, for a day of sightseeing. They ended up at the Arch to view the fireworks at night and were standing on the loading deck at the top, about to board a capsule and get some dinner, when the lights went out.

"There was a screeching noise, shaking on the steps and bang — everything shut down," Kiwala said.

Some young children got scared and screamed. His asthmatic 10-year-old, who had been nervous about the ride up, started hyperventilating. His fiancée offered to walk down, but park rangers at the top said the stairs were too dark to descend safely. At first, the people trapped upstairs tried to stay upbeat. They chatted and listened politely to updates each half-hour.

Then, during the second hour, the mood changed. People started yelling back at the staffers making the announcements. Some started cursing. Kiwala's children complained that their tummies hurt, that they were tired and wanted to go home. One son needed to use the bathroom — badly. He told his father that he urinated in a bag in a corner, although Kiwala isn't sure whether that really happened.

A few of the stranded tourists were demanding answers, and others were joking that they were all going to die, which upset other small children and their parents nearby.

Finally, when the power came back on around 11 p.m., St. Louis firefighters brought huge lights and lighted the dark, curving stairwell for groups of people to climb down 300 feet of stairs to a freight elevator.

Kiwala wondered how some of the elderly and youngest children would make it down the poorly lighted, dirty stairs. Everyone eventually did.

He still considered his family better off than those trapped inside the small round pods, in which five people scrunch together for the four-minute ride to the top. Taller visitors have to hunch over to fit.

Ronnie Dover of Homer, La., promised his claustrophobic wife, Misty, that the capsule ride to the observation deck would be over before she knew it. Four hundred feet up, the capsule ground to a halt.

"I told her it would be a four-minute ride. It turned into two hours and 48 minutes," he said.

Their friends in the adjoining car, Bo and Rebecca Thibodeaux, used cell phones for light and worried that the lack of air conditioning would exacerbate their son Evan's asthma.

"It was a like a spaceship without air," said Rebecca.

Bo Thibodeaux said Saturday's trip to the Arch and St. Louis will be his last. "I saw what I wanted to see, and now I'm never coming back," he said.

Others, however, were not so easily deterred. On Sunday, there were long lines and waits for the tram ride all day. Cara and Justin Pourtorkan were visiting from Oklahoma City with their 6-month-old baby. They waited in line Saturday night to ride to the top of the Arch and passed on the ill-fated 8:30 ride because of the long wait. They saw and heard about the problems later that evening, but Sunday morning, they were back at the front of the line.

"We were a little nervous," Cara Pourtorkan said. They let a few successful rides go up before boarding.

DJay23
07-23-2007, 06:41 AM
That's what they get for going to St. Louis.

HonestChieffan
07-23-2007, 07:01 AM
One more reason not to go to that town.

KC Kings
07-23-2007, 08:50 AM
Ok, maybe I need to change the vacation plans. We were planning on going to the arch this Saturday morning before a day at the City Museum, but maybe we will just drive by it instead...

StcChief
07-23-2007, 09:54 AM
Taking the stairs down inside would have been cool for about 2-3 stories after that NFW