Damaging To Skegness?

Is the incident at Bottons Amusement Park damaging to the image of Skegness? Let's look at what actually happened.

For the first time in getting on for 50 years, as far as I am aware, the park suffered a fairly serious mechanical failure on one of it's rides. Thankfully the safety features built into the ride worked properly and so the damage to human health was minimised, although it must have been pretty traumatic to have actually been on the ride when the incident occurred.

The Emergency Services kicked in with their normal professionalism and swung into action within minutes. What would we do without them? They freed those still held into position by the safety features and dealt with the casualties properly. We should all remember the great job that our policemen, firemen and ambulance crews, in fact all of our Emergency services, actually do.

The Health and Safety Executive were notified as they should be and will (or have by now) carry out a full investigation. It is to be hoped that their findings are not detrimental to the Park itself, which I am sure they will not be.

Jimmy Botton (the owner of the park) has stated that the ride that failed would be removed from the park and, due to third hand reports, I believe this has happened or is happening.

So, what do you think? Damaging for Skegness?

I would say no. Accidents happen and can never be eradicated. Whatever the cause of the problem with the ride lessons will have been learned and the procedures in place locally for such an incident have been found to work well. We can be confident in them as can visitors to the town.

There has been lots of national coverage in the press and the media. Is that bad for the town? I don't think so. In the short term, and remember we are coming to the end of our season, a very few people may be put off from visiting, but in the long run the name of Skegness will be in the consciousness of far more people.

All in all then not overly negative.

I wish all of those that were injured a speedy recovery and hope that those others involved and not injured will not suffer lasting problems. These things happen so infrequently that all involved were incredibly unlucky to have been there at that moment in time.