Thirty children stuck in amusement park attraction in Belgium | Abroad

The attraction was blocked due to a technical defect. El Volador, ‘the pride of the Mexican Square’, is how Bellewaerde Park calls the revolving tower in which the children got stuck at a height of about 15 meters.

“Don’t panic, everyone is calm,” said the park management on Friday afternoon. The fire brigade of the Westhoek zone had to use a ladder truck to free the children. The Red Cross was also present to receive the children.

“Our own technicians first tried to get the gondola down themselves. Then the Westhoek fire brigade was called up to help the children down. The children were brought down one by one in a harness. This mainly concerns children of around thirteen years of age. After the evacuation, they were housed in the nearby Texas Grill on Mexico’s Square in the park. The fire brigade carries out annual exercises on this attraction and therefore knows how to act ”, says a spokesperson for the fire brigade.

Not for the first time

It is not the first time that the attraction has suffered from a jam. In 2006 the attraction crashed and thirteen amusement park goers got stuck. In 2013, the attraction blocked again, when seven people had nowhere to go for an hour. In those cases, the cold weather was related to the outage. In 2018, 40 visitors were trapped in the attraction, according to the police of the Arro Ieper police zone.

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