Sprinklers are sometimes thought of as a magic bullet that can solve nearly any fire protection problem, Fairchild says. and ran back to the entrance, bumping into walls. '', See the article in its original context from. The US Sun has contacted Six Flags for comment. Reddit and its partners use cookies and similar technologies to provide you with a better experience. ''We thought that was the extent of the injuries, that everyone had gotten out.'' After the fire, Six Flags Great Adventure updated park structures with equipment that includes sprinkler systems, smoke and heat detectors and emergency generators, and added an in-house. New Jersey's Department of Labor and Industries inspects the safety of rides, such as roller coasters and ferris wheels. [34][35][36][37], Immediately after the fire, several other New Jersey haunted house attractions were closed pending fire inspections, including the multi-trailer "Doorway to Hell" on Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, New Jersey, also built by Toms River Haunted House Company. The park's Haunted Castle horror attraction was consumed by flames and left eight people dead all teenagers and seven more injured. After crossing a drawbridge over the surrounding moat, visitors entered the castle and felt their way along a 450-foot (140m)-long convoluted path of dim corridors, occasionally being startled when employee actors dressed as mummies, vampires and other creatures jumped from hiding. According to the testimony of Joseph Iraca,. Locally, municipalities enforce state and local building codes governing fire safety and electrical wiring. Count Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man and Lizzie Borden were frequent guest stars. [10], Only one side of the structure, utilizing 9 of the 17 trailers, was occupied at the time of the fire. '', See the article in its original context from. Online exclusive: The New Jersey Uniform Fire Code also requires a certificate of occupancy be obtained before certain attractions are opened to the public. The ending had melted away. As the thirtieth anniversary of the Haunted Castle fire approached, Fairchild, now manager and senior associate of fire protection and life safety at Ballinger, an architectural/engineering firm in Philadelphia, decided to take another look at the event. [26] A defense forensic pathologist said arson might be the cause, saying that "high levels" of benzene in the victims' blood "could indicate some sinister reason for the fire". Roughly 30 people were in the attraction when the fire began. Mr. Damesek called the families yesterday morning to offer sympathy. The prosecution called as witnesses fire-prevention consultants who had inspected the castle, and who had recommended the installation of sprinklers or smoke alarms. ''That's when my worst fears became reality,'' he said. The fire and its aftermath The work by Fairchild and Casterline is the latest chapter in a saga that began with the tragic deaths of eight young people on a spring evening in 1984. The families went to the park Saturday, carrying dental records and other information about their children. [32], The families of four of the victims filed civil suits against Bally Manufacturing, the owner of Six Flags; Six Flags Great Adventure; and the Castle's builder, George Mahana, the owner of Toms River Haunted House Company, charging manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter. Strobe lights gave glances of the grim scene. According to The New York Times, the indictment charged the companies with reckless conduct amounting to extreme indifference to human life for failing to take adequate fire prevention measures., At the trial, Chet Schirmer, president of Schirmer Engineering Corporation and chair of both the NFPA Technical Committee on Automatic Sprinklers and the NFPA Board of Directors, along with Rolf Jensen, president of Rolf Jensen and Associates, appeared as defense witnesses. The materials used on the walls included foam rubber, various fabrics and plastics, plywood and tar paper. The attraction consisted of 14 aluminum trailers with a facade that gave it the haunted-house appearance. Eight of the tragic group got trapped and died of smoke inhalation. They told the jury that after five years of semiannual inspections, the devices were not in place when the attraction burned down. The staffing requirements for the haunted house were drawn from other areas of the park; they were clowns and street performers when they were not acting as vampires or serial killers. Fairchild and Casterline modeled the exhaust fan directly into FDS. As Low As $14.99 Buy Now Seven people were treated for smoke inhalation and released from the. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. It includes walk-through haunted mazes, scare zones, shows, and . Great Adventure, New Jersey- Old Haunted House which caught fire and took 8 teenager's lives in May 1985. [12], One witness, whose group entered several minutes after the group who fell victim, later testified that she saw flames coming from around the bend of the attraction's Hunchback display. From there, the guests would enter through the drawbridge main portal where a doorman would direct them to the entrance of the actual walk-through. Kathleen Robinson is editorial operations manager for NFPA Journal. Finally, Fleming questioned the assumption that standard sprinklers would have responded too slowly and would not have put water high enough on the wall to stop the fire from spreading. But when the fire was out, firemen combing through the rubble found eight bodies. The smoke from the Haunted Castle billlowed over an adjacent parking lot, enveloping people walking to and from their cars, Peter Berkery said. Court testimonyheard how the group had been confused by a fake door which was not an exit but instead a closet. Park officials then tried to identify the bodies and did not announce the deaths until about 10:45 P.M. Four of the injured were identified as Patricia Lynch, 18 years old, of Yorktown Heights, N.Y.; Joan Minter, 20, of Brooklyn; Stephanie Peterson, 20, of Brooklyn, and Keith Berkery, 18, of Whippany, N.J., Peter Berkery's brother, who was overcome by smoke in a parking lot next to the Haunted Castle. TOMS RIVER, N.J. (AP) _ A jury acquitted Great Adventure amusement park and its parent company, Six Flags Corp., of manslaughter and aggravated manslaughter Saturday in the fire deaths of eight teen-agers in a haunted house. What was supposed to be a fun event for a group of teens quickly turned into a nightmare. Goodbye Fright Fest, hello Hallowfest. [6] At peak times, the doorman would alternate sides to keep a gap between groups to allow for greater effect and to keep the leaders from warning the following group of upcoming surprises. [4], A fire began in the attraction at 6:35p.m. on May 11, 1984. . JACKSON For more than four decades, people have gone to Six Flags Great Adventure for a day of fun, riding roller coasters, playing boardwalk-style games and taking part in other amusements. According to park officials, the Haunted Castle is about 70 feet by 100 feet. He added that some of the youths at the park had come to hear a concert by the rock and roll group Golden Earring. The work by Fairchild and Casterline is the latest chapter in a saga that began with the tragic deaths of eight young people on a spring evening in 1984. Crosses indicate where fatalities were discovered. Years later, while reading about fire modeling, Fairchild stumbled across Flemings report. A second juror disagreed, saying that township officials were not derelict. Six Flags Great Adventure Jackson, NJ. [4][38][39] New Jersey and other states passed new fire-safety laws for dark rides and "any structure that intentionally disorients". Last night, visitors to the scene said that the aluminum was melted, seared and blackened by the blaze. He was joined on the project by Brad Casterline, a project manager at FSC, Inc., an engineering firm in Overland Park, Kansas, who contributed experience in fire and panic egress modeling. The Haunted Castle was a haunted attraction at Six Flags Great Adventure amusement park in Jackson Township, New Jersey. Flemings report appeared in Sprinkler Quarterly magazine, and the plaintiffs attorneys later contacted NFSA to ask if they could use it in support of their civil suits. Fleming used a computer program developed by Factory Mutual to determine dry-pipe valve trip time, which Fairchild and Casterline also accomplished with SprinkFDT. [citation needed], Originally known as the Haunted House, the attraction was constructed of four aluminum semi-trailers when it opened in 1978. The foam-covered walls ignited, and the fire, fueled by the plywood and other materials, spread rapidly. The Scene Great Adventure Inc. and its parent company, the Six Flags Corporation of Chicago, are on trial on charges of aggravated manslaughter. ''There's nothing I can tell them to make it easier. Were still studying it, he says. [11], On September 14, 1984, a grand jury in Toms River, New Jersey, indicted Six Flags Great Adventure and its parent company, Six Flags, on a charge of aggravated manslaughter, for "recklessly causing the deaths under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to human life". To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Therefore, in my opinion, smoke and heat detectors would not have been of any particular value in this building., The response to Schirmers testimony was sharp and immediate. Haunted Castle (Six Flags Great Adventure), Effects on the park and similar attractions, Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), "Jury Acquits Companies In Great Adventure Fires", "Settlement Reached In Suit By Great Adventure Victim's Family", "Fire at the Haunted Castle (excerpted from, "GREAT ADVENTURE'S SISTER PARK INSTALLED SPRINKLERS", "SPRINKLERS NOT SOUGHT, ATTRACTION BUILDER SAYS", "OFFICIAL RECALLS CODE VIOLATIONS AT THEME PARK", "CAUSE SOUGHT IN BLAZE FATAL TO 8 AT JERSEY PARK'S HAUNTED CASTLE", "WORKER AT GREAT ADVENTURE CITES DELAY IN REPORTING FIRE", "GIRL TELLS COURT ABOUT ESCAPING FUN HOUSE FIRE", "8 PEOPLE KILLED, 7 HURT IN BLAZE AT THEME PARK", "FUN HOUSE NEVER INSPECTED, TOWN FIRE INSPECTOR TESTIFIES", "FIRE SAFETY WAS WEAK AT 6 FLAGS, EXPERT SAYS", "PARK-FIRE INQUIRY FINDS THE SYSTEM FELL SHORT", "REPORT IN JERSEY FINDS PARK FIRE WAS AVOIDABLE", "The Uniform Construction Code (NJAC 5:23)", "AMUSEMENT PARK OWNERS GO ON TRIAL FOR FIRE THAT KILLED 8", "HAUNTED CASTLE MANAGER SAYS HE REPORTED PERILS", "3 EX-PARK AIDES SAY SAFETY PLEAS WENT UNHEEDED", "BADEN CRITICIZES INQUIRY BY JERSEY INTO PARK FIRE", "CLOSING STATEMENTS TO JURORS ARE MADE IN PARK FIRE TRIAL", "FUN HOUSE PATROL CALLED A SUBSTITUTE FOR ALARMS", "FIRE SAFETY OFFICIAL CRITICIZED FOR TESTIMONY ON FATAL JERSEY BLAZE", "FOREMAN OF JURY BLAMES TOWN FOR SIX FLAGS FIRE", "GREAT ADVENTURE JUROR ABSOLVES TOWNSHIP IN FIRE", "PARENTS SEEK $2.6 BILLION IN SUITS OVER DEATHS OF 4 IN BLAZE AT PARK", "FAMILY SETTLES FOR $750,000 IN GREAT ADVENTURE FIRE", "JERSEY FIRE PANEL TO SUGGEST AMUSEMENT-PARK IMPROVEMENTS", "PROSECUTOR FACING LEGAL TEAM IN TRIAL ON PARK FIRE", "New video recounts story of '84 Great Adventure fire", Smith's Haunted Castle documentary at YouTube, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Haunted_Castle_(Six_Flags_Great_Adventure)&oldid=1145530702, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from July 2017, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 19 March 2023, at 16:48. He said that the cause of the blaze was being investigated by the Ocean County Arson Squad and the New Jersey State Police Arson Squad, and that they would probably not have preliminary findings before Monday. "Everyone who was at Great Adventure that day and anyone who lives around here will never forget that day, as long as they shall live," Smith said. (For more on code changes brought about by the Haunted Castle fire, visit nfpa.org/hauntedcastle.). Plot info: Great Valley, Section 15, Grave 4279. They were said to have been found harboring near an air conditioning vent. It was acrid, black and heavy and it stunk.'. During his tenure as chair of the committee, for example, new standards such as NFPA 13D, Installation of Sprinkler Systems in One- and Two-Family Dwellings and Manufactured Homes, NFPA 13R, Installation of Sprinkler Systems in Residential Occupancies Up To and Including Four Stories in Height, and NFPA 25, Water-Based Fire Protection Systems, came into existence. In other words, I have an honest uncertainty as to whether sprinklers under these circumstances would have saved the lives. Furthermore, he said, considering the early stages at which the fire was discovered in this particular instance, the installation of smoke detectors or an alarm system would not have had an effect on the ultimate outcome.. The catastrophe occurred in 1984, at the Haunted Castle attraction at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey. The first sprinkler analysis They contended that the fire was arson, and that no amount of precautions would have saved lives. SIX FLAGS HAUNTED CASTLE FIRE 4 Emergency personnel responding to the disaster had to use white body bags to differentiate the victims from the charred mannequins. There they were reassembled and would continue to run from 1979 through 1982. Occasionally the digitization process introduces transcription errors or other problems; we are continuing to work to improve these archived versions. A spokesman for the local volunteer fire department said it had not enforced the state requirement for smoke detectors because the township's building inspector said that the code did not apply: the inspector had determined that the Castle was a temporary structure. The chairman of the New Jersey Fire Safety Commission, State Senator John Caufield, Democrat of Essex, said yesterday he would order a special public hearing into the fire and the deaths. . The work by Fairchild and Casterline is the latest chapter in a saga that began with the tragic deaths of eight young people on a spring evening in 1984. But maybe not even then.. Shortly after the fire began, park officials said all the injured and other park visitors had been evacuated safely from the building. 11, 1984 fire in the "Haunted Castle" at the Six Flags Great Adventure Park in New Jersey, which . The chairman of the New Jersey Fire Safety. A place for forensic students, medical examiners, morticians and other morbidly interested individuals to respectfully discuss content relevant to a crime scene. Alcoves along the route were used to present vignettes of famous and infamous characters and events from movies, horror and ghost stories, and sometimes real life, with live actors portraying the stars of the scene. Hurricane Harbor New Jersey. Haunted Castle fire (1984) A day at Six Flags Great Adventure has been a rite of passage for generations of Jersey youth, but there's a dark chapter in that legacy of fun -- the deadly fire at . Fire chiefs told news outlets at the time: "The fire spread so quickly because of the wind that apparently the victims had no time to escape. . Now the . When the buses left the park at midnight, he conducted a head count. Unhappy Mother's Day, ''The most tragic thing is these kids died in a place they went to have fun,'' said the high school's principal, Morton Damesek, sitting in his Queens home. Code changes prompted by the Haunted Castle fire were far-reaching, In the 1988 edition, a new section, Special Provisions for Special Amusement Buildings, was added. The Haunted Castle was a popular attraction at Six Flags. The bodies were charred beyond recognition. [7] During the subsequent criminal trial, the Jackson Township fire inspector testified that he had never inspected the castle. According to an investigation report prepared by John Bouchard, then assistant division director of NFPAs Engineering Services Division, the boy apparently continued through the Castle without notifying anyone of the problem. However, industry sources were reporting that ensuing poor attendance almost caused the park to close in 1987. A catastrophic fire - which saw flames "leaping 100 feet in the air" - killed eight teenagers and injured at least seven more. 2018 - Harley Quinn Spinsanity: A 147-foot-tall pendulum ride that hits 70 mph. She also said she had seen him heading toward the haunted house. . By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The fire broke out shortly before 6:30 p.m., when a 14-year-old boy who was using a lighter to find his way through the attraction accidentally walked into the polyurethane foam padding covering a wall and set it on fire. [citation needed], The Haunted House attraction had a gatekeeper stationed outside with a doorkeeper admitting visitors, while three or four monsters inside occupied various scenes or wandered around surprising and frightening groups of visitors. The contents fascinated him. The attraction also included emergency lighting that would illuminate the interior if the power failed. Family-friendly Thrills by Day is NOON - 5 P.M, and Fright by Night monsters & scares begin after 5 P.M. Conversely, an analysis of potential sprinkler performance in the Haunted Castle conducted a year after the fire found that sprinklers could have prevented the fatalities. He wanted to use state-of-the-art computer modeling to analyze the growth rate, potential sprinkler response times, water delivery times, maximum heat release rates, and tenability criteria of the fire to see if he could reach a definitive answer on the sprinkler question. Fitzgerald said the park's in-house fire-safety team routinely checks for hazards and inspects all buildings and equipment. They are accused of ''reckless'' conduct in failing to. Mr. Van Arsdale said he did not know why the group was not able to escape. He said the older youth, who appeared to be familiar with the castle, offered to guide him through. There was a string of deaths and accidents at Six Flags in the 80s - Action Park gets all the nostalgia "lol it's so dangerous" but Six Flags had a much worse reputation for . The original planning had been to treat the attraction as seasonal and disassemble the trailers and send them back at the end of the season. A medieval-styled faade was built for the Haunted Castle on the site of the Alpen Blitz across from the Muzik Express. He decided to take the money he had saved and go shopping for new clothes instead. [27] A top fire-safety official testifying for the defense said that sprinklers and smoke detectors might have saved part of the structure, but would not have saved lives because by then "you would have had lethal combustion products throughout the facility" suffocating the victims. . Reduce your wait with an Express Haunted House Add-On. To help create the right mood, creepy music was played over exterior speakers. Eight teenagers were killed after a blaze broke out at the Haunted Castle at Six Flags in Jackson, New Jersey, on May 11, 1984. ''That's when my mind began wondering if something was wrong,'' Mr. Damesek said. When the time came to look at colleges and figure out what he might want to study, he chose the fire protection engineering technology program at Delaware Technical Community College. Great Adventure officials declined to comment on the film.[44]. Great Escape Lake George, NY. In other words, it is necessary that water hit high enough on the walls to prevent fire spread, and it is also necessary that the sprinkler operate fast enough to knock the fire down and maintain tenability limits in that space of origin.. . FDS does not include a fluid delivery model, however, so Fairchild enlisted the help of Mike Mahomet of Tyco, who holds the patent on Tycos fluid delivery time software, SprinkFDT, currently the only UL-listed software on the market for calculating dry-pipe sprinkler system activation times. But it did lead to new fire safety procedures, including sprinkler systems. [11] The lone survivor of the group was carried to safety by a park employee. The Mysteries and Controversies Surrounding the deadly . The defendants denied any culpability. It required every special amusement building, such as the Haunted Castle, to be protected throughout by an approved automatic sprinkler system that is properly installed and maintained. Attached to its exterior were painted turrets and towers of plywood on wooden frames intended to emulate a medieval faade. Fleming reviewed his sprinkler application rate and water distribution pattern data, compared it to full-scale testing of a mobile home that had been allowed to burn to near flashover, and concluded that sprinkler discharge would have suppressed the fire. Onlooker Peter Berkery told The New York Times: "I saw security guards running, and parents running and an incredible amount of smoke rising toward the sky. The tragedy began as a happy outing. Fright Fest is back and spookier than ever! ''Hey, Sammy,'' he called to his friend, Samuel Valentine, ''have a good time. Neither did four of his fellow students. The trailers housed two separate Haunted Castle attractions, mirror images of each other, which operated simultaneously during peak times. The tragedy - one the worst theme disasters ever - unfolded on May 11, 1984 when the blaze broke out inside the parks walk through Haunted Castle at around 6:30pm. Lake George, NY. Bottom line: So far, at least, even with all their whiz-bang technology, Fairchild and Casterline cannot provide a definitive answer to the question, Would sprinklers have prevented eight teens from dying in the Haunted Castle in 1984? Its just as difficult to say if Schirmers opinion was wrong.
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