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Although I don't inspect rides for a living, I do hold a NAARSO Level I inspector certification. I've never known whether I should be proud of myself for having passed the NAARSO test, or frightened that someone who knows as little as I do could possibly be inspecting rides. That said, one of the requirements for keeping that certificate current is to obtain at least 32 hours of appropriate continuing education every two years.
Last year I went to NAARSO's own safety school in Charlotte. This year, as an alternative, I took the safety class sponsored by the Northwest Showmen's Club (NWSC). The NWSC seminar differs from the NAARSO school in some important ways. First of all, it is quite a bit cheaper, and second, it is intended for as many employees as possible from the dozen or more participating parks and carnivals. Where the NAARSO school includes a lot of ride inspectors, the NWSC school is aimed squarely at the people who move, operate, and maintain rides on a daily basis. So the focus is a little different...more of an emphasis on carnival rides versus fixed rides, more of an emphasis on operation and maintenance than on inspection. That's all perfectly good, but it's useful to know that kind of a bias up front. Finally, the NWSC school differs from the NAARSO school in that there is a cookhouse crew that provides three squares a day for the whole week.
The NWSC school is also particularly attractive to me because I have relatives who live in Portland, not far at all from Oaks Park where the first two days of classes are held.
Monday morning we started off in the Oaks Park dance pavilion with an introductory speech by Dr. Larry Helms talked a bit about our business, and why we were doing it. He pointed out that Oaks Park is about to start its 100th season, and that the skating rink is one of the largest in the Northwest, and the only one in the country with a live, manually played Wurlitzer rink organ. The rest of his talk was largely about attitude and psychology, and how all that combines to make our customers want to do business with us instead of someone else. Once he finished, the real work began.
The next class was almost more of a sales pitch, as Adam Leach from Coiltron tried to talk about coils and transformers. I'm sorry to say, he may know all there is to know about coils, but he was not a great presenter. I have to offer many kudos to Kim Jones from Funtastic Shows for rescuing this presenter by seeding questions. The show was well received, but it wasn't much of a show and I don't think many of us got much out of it.
Dave Collins, on the other hand, is an excellent presenter and did a class called "Fatal Attractions." He presented a series of structural and organizational flaws, problems within the culture of an organization, and then linked those problems to several well-known fatal ride accidents.
Dave ran long, so I missed most of the concurrent class on solvents, again presented by a manufacturer, but apparently a more 'meaty' presentation than the coil guys had. After lunch, Jerry Aldrich talked about some of the services that shows do, and do not, need to provide for customers with disabilities not only to comply with the ADA, but also as simple good business practice. Guy Sherbourne from ORI Industries finished up the afternoon by explaining the simple things a show needs to do to keep its Eyerly rides running forever (as if they haven't already). It's kind of interesting...if all the shows did as Guy says at these talks, they'd never have to buy parts from him. Lucky for him, they don't.
On Tuesday, Jerry Aldrich returned to the Oaks Park dance pavilion with a presentation on signs, and I was very happy to see him address, if only briefly, the problem of signs written by attorneys that replace useful information with fine print and weasel words. That, and the problem of 'truth in signs'. Joe Burum visited us from Waterloo Tent & Tarp to talk about tent cleaning...what to use, how to do it, stuff like that. Dave Collins, then, gave a talk about emergency response, how to react when things go wrong, what not to do, that sort of thing. Much of the presentation was rooted in the need to combine knowledge with practical experience. He also had us develop an evacuation plan for the ZL-42 coaster out in the Oaks Park parking lot.
Steve Elliott served as our ASTM liason for the course, explaining how, now that the core standards for amusement rides are in place, the F-24 committee is making some structural changes to the way the amusement ride standards get passed in an effort to make the process work a little more sensibly. Martin Vine then talked about essential tools and how to use them, particularly the setup and takedown tools versus the maintenance tools. The rest of the afternoon was taken up by Patty Sullivan telling us a lot of useful details about Eli Bridge products. We didn't get the in-depth look at a Scrambler tub this time, but we got all the inspection points.
Wednesday, we moved over to the Funtastic Shows winter quarters on the East side of Portland. They're on Powell Blvd. at 108th St., the location marked only by the ancient sign for the long-departed 104th Street Drive-In. The show's collection of trucks is parked along the fence, and the rides and joints are tucked safely away inside the buildings. A couple of the shops were set up as classrooms. Outside, an ARM Ali-Baba was set up, and inside, surrounding the classroom were a Zamperla Flying Tigers, a Tivoli/AmTech Spin-Out, a Sartori Fire Brigade, a Dartron Slide, and a Wisdom Gravitron. I did notice that the rides were carefully selected to match the manufacturers whose representatives were scheduled to give presentations (Dartron, Wisdom, ARM, AmTech and Zamperla).
On Wednesday morning, there was a decided emphasis on electrical safety. Much of the morning was taken up with presentations explaining the function of ground-fault circuit interrupters, including dramatic demonstrations of what happens when water and power tools get together. That was followed by some information about arc-flash and arc-blast hazards, with a footnote that requirements for personnel protection from arc-blast hazards are a part of NFPA-70E, which I guess is the occupational safety version of the National Electric Code. Steve Elliott gave his customary explanation of where dynamic forces come from on rides, Dave Collins continued the electrical safety theme by telling us all about his all-too-personal experience with arc flash, and Patty Sullivan talked about ways of promoting ride safety in the community.
That afternoon, Martin Vine talked about some of his experiences with moving the Space Roller and Fireball for an independent operator, and how really small, stupid problems led...or could lead...to enormous and/or expensive problems. He pointed out that on such independent concessions, ride downtime is simply not an option with a 7-figure ride and $2 tickets. He was followed up by Bob Coil from Dartron, who explained (among other things) the little details that are supposed to prevent Cliff Hanger tubs from flying down the midway. He also talked about the design process that went into the new Zero Gravity ride, an update of the Round-Up. He mentioned that Dartron's top selling ride now is the Cliff Hanger, with 56 units, but he tempered his enthusiasm by mentioning that Hrubetz sold about 280 Round-Up rides.
Finally, the day would be incomplete without yet another electrical class. This time it was hosted by Funtastic's own Kim Jones, and it talked about...what else? Grounding, and how overcurrent protection devices work. It seemed to be a theme for the day.
Thursday we returned to Funtastic for the final day of the school. Most of the morning was taken up by Phil Slaggert's excellent major incident investigation course, which I had been through at NAARSO last year. This was followed by a fastener demonstration which was not nearly as good as the one I saw a couple of years ago, a presentation by Vic Wisdom about his company's products (though surprisingly enough he didn't have much to say about either the Gravitron or the Sizzler...), and a follow-up electrical class by Kim Jones, this time getting into some Ohm's Law applications and just touching on a couple of grounding rule changes in the 2005 electric code.
Thursday night was the Showmen's Club banquet, awards presentation, and fund-raising auction. It had been a busyu week, featuring a whole lot to learn. As usual, it was an excellent school, well targeted for its audience, and general enough to be useful and meaningful for anybody studying amusement ride safety. I was a little surprised that there was not a session on hydraulics, but these days electrical is the 'hot topic' and it's becoming progressively more important as the rides get more complex. So that was the notable omission this year from an otherwise excellent school.
--Dave Althoff, Jr.
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