KHOU 11<\/a> camera shows the Iron Shark roller coaster stuck near the top of the ride. A ladder was stretched toward the top to help the riders.<\/p>\nAccording to people at the pier, there were eight Houston STEM students on the coaster when it got stuck. They were on a senior trip, some of the other students said.<\/p>\n
It’s unclear what happened to make the ride stop, but it reportedly came to a halt at about 5:30 p.m. As of 7:40 p.m., the ride was still stuck.<\/p>\n
According to the Pleasure Pier website, the ride includes a 100-foot vertical lift and a beyond-vertical drop. It reaches speeds of 52 mph, and riders have to be 42 inches tall to get on.<\/p>\n
The Galveston Fire Department was at the scene to help get the riders down. The process involved each person being put in a harness and bringing them down one by one.<\/p>\n
Terry Turney, chief operating officer of Pleasure Pier, said the ride stopped as a result of a malfunction.<\/p>\n
“The ride experienced a malfunction at its initial ascent, however, as designed, it immediately stopped to keep everyone safe,” Turney said in an emailed statement. “Our focus immediately shifted to the safety of our guests. Therefore, we contacted the Fire Department to assist, ensuring all guests were safely removed from the ride. A thorough inspection of the ride will take place before it is placed back in service.”<\/p>\n
Pleasure Pier was evacuated due to the rescue operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a developing story, and updates will be added to this article when they become available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Riders were stranded atop the Iron Shark roller coaster at Galveston Pleasure Pier on Thursday evening. GALVESTON, Texas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313352,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-313351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313351","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}