Disneyland Lead Violations: The Culmination Of A Policy Of Profit Over Public Safety?

In September of 2003, 22-year-old Marcelo Torres, of Gardena, and a group of friends rode in the lead passenger car of one of the trains on Disneyland’s rollercoaster Big Thunder Mountain. About one-third of the way through the ride, two bolts on the locomotive’s left guide wheel assembly became detached, which caused an axle to catch in the railroad’s ties. The rear of the locomotive slammed into the top of the cave as it nose-dived, the impact causing the lead passenger car to break away and crash into its undercarriage. The weight of the locomotive crushed Torres’ chest and body. He died from blunt force trauma and internal bleeding. His friends were seriously injured.

When the attorney Torres’ parents hired to pursue their wrongful death case against the Orange County park conducted his investigation of the accident, he discovered that Disneyland had shifted from its previous policy of relying on the expertise and experience of longtime park mechanics to one of reliability-centered maintenance. In implementing the new policy, “staffing and maintenance procedures were pared back and…redundancies that provided an extra margin of safety were eliminated.” On two occasions, an employee who had worked at the park for more than 20 years even wrote memos to management and the President of Disney warning of systematic failures and the escalating risk of accidents.

The attorney attributed the accident that claimed Torres’ life to such systematic failures: in the weeks preceding the crash, employees had recorded several mechanical errors with the train. Three days before the crash, a mechanic replaced a wheel but neglected to tighten the bolts and place a safety wire around them, instead attaching a tag indicating the train was to be kept out of service. Ignorant of the meaning of the color-coding system for the tags, ride operators placed the train back in service on the day of the incident, allowing it to continue there despite hearing noises suggesting a problem.

Although the Torres family ultimately settled with Disney and the company retrained its machinists, maintenance workers, and managers, it is unclear whether systematic changes were made to its maintenance policy.
Last spring, Disneyland’s regard for public safety was again brought into question when an environmental group filed a lawsuit in California superior court alleging that the company was exposing the public to unsafe and illegal levels of lead at its park. According to the group, an investigation had revealed levels of lead ranging from .98 to 1300 micrograms on park fixtures with which children frequently came in contact. Under California’s Toxic Chemical Notification Law, a business cannot expose the public to more than 0.5 micrograms of lead without first notifying it. Disney was unresponsive when the group initially sent its test results and requested signs be posted around the park, prompting the filing of the lawsuit and the injunction.
These recent safety violations suggest that rather than learn a lesson from the fatal and injury accidents that occurred at the park during the late ‘90s and early ‘00s Disney has continued a policy of profit over public safety.

By: Larry Drexel

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Larry Drexel is a Public Relations manager. To obtain free, informative books or articles he suggests visiting Orange County injury attorney.