PKI Jizzman Posted September 15, 2008 Share Posted September 15, 2008 So it's Sunday the 14th, a nice and breezy sunny day. I arrive about 12PM for a 12:30 to 9PM shift. It's a Proctor and Gamble day, the second of the two so it's fairly crowded. I knew there was talk of the storm coming up around four, but I wasn't clear on everything. I was sent to Launch Pad/Euro-Bungy to sell tickets and such. Well around 1:20PM, the winds REALLY started to pick up and it got very cloudy. Things on the grounded started to sting your legs when gusts picked up; hats started to fly off heads; and 15 minutes later, the ride closed down. Drop Tower, Sling Shot, SoB, and Skyflier had been closed since I got there and Eiffel Tower recently shut down. Around 2PM, I was sent out to 3 Point Challenge. We got about 3 players in the next hour because of the high winds. The high score that day was 6 points! At this time, the wind was SO strong I was setting up garbage cans that had fallen over every 5 minutes or so. Branches and parts of trees were starting to come down and I heard that a lamp post had fallen down. By then I noticed the medical cars wizzing around; I had gotten hit in the head by at least 5 branches! Isn't that enough to be concerned about? Apparently not because it wasn't until 30 minutes later where I saw Vortex running empty trains. I was getting VERY nervous watching it slug through the loops. Usually, you're whipped through them. That proved something was up. Later, I saw my supervisor running around and we were told to pack EVERYTHING up and put it away. About 10 minutes later the PA announced, "Due to extreme weather conditions, the park is closing IMMEDIATELY. Please exit via the main gate as quickly and safely as possible." Some people just didn't get it because they were lingering around waiting for the rides to re-open. The police came around and ushered people out while we helped clean things up and get the games prizes down from display. The police came around again and yelled for us to leave. By now, the wind was making it hard to hear, hard to see, and almost hard to walk. Looking up into the sky, you could see all sorts of dibrees flying around; leaves, trees, trash cans (just kidding). It was really frightening. We packed up, but then were told to come back and help out; hey, there were hundreds of basketballs that needed to be bagged, prizes were falling off of the wires....so we helped out. Finally, the police came around a second time and screamed for us to leave. We were let go. Shortly after the PA was announcing for all staff and workers to go home! As we headed out, I watched the tops of street lights fly off, trees being uprooted, unknown objects flying around, and even the Diamondback sign on the Eiffel Tower looked like it was going to fly off! We made it out into the parking lot, only to be greeted by small rocks and pebbles flying around at 40-50 miles per hour. Now, the winds were REALLY picking up. Like, it was really getting hard to walk in; especialy when the little rocks in the parking lot were hitting your legs. I noticed a lot of cars in the lot had dents and bumps on them; when I opened the door to my car, I found out. The door flung open, luckily I caught it! That thing was so hard to pull shut! So everyone's trying to rush out of KI, causing massive jams. A few of the parking lot signs flew off, 2 of them hitting my car! Luckily they were plastic instead of metal. I drove by the track for DB....it wasn't going anywhere. Everyone's cars were rocking back and forth as the wind blew. I got home alright, I had to take a few detours due to accidents, roofs being blown off houses, and trees being toppled over into the middle of the road. Not to mention power lines. We just got power back today. Overall, I think KI really should have learned the lesson - close the park sooner!!!! Holy crap, I'm lucky to be alive! One of my good friends got seriously hurt (tree fell onto his car/him) and he was in ER! Should he have been sent home earlier, he might have made it home safely. Thinking back: -What if you were on Beast? It's in the middle of the woods! Trees were being up rooted, branches were snapping, and pieces of them were flying through the air. -Wooden coasters: I'm sure there's a concern that the wood would have been able to snap; there were gusts up to 77mph! Oh, and I hope they will be able to get things back to normal for this weekend. I'll post some pictures later. Feel free to comment. -JZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dandaman Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Yeah, the winds were suddenly and especially wicked last night around 6 or 7 here. I yelled at my friends online to get the hell inside because I knew they were at a pool party. (Still don't know why their account was left on.) The damage here is NOTHING like the hell you just described, though. Glad you made it out alive, and good luck to your friend on recovery/insurance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rct3man777 Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Wait...how is this possible? Big X-Where Ike strikes Small X-Where ohio is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coasterdude5 Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^ The remnants of a tropical system can travel and, in this case, merge with cold fronts to form pretty bad conditions. Just because the hurricane status is gone, doesn't mean the storm is gone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_teisco_delrey Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Wait...how is this possible? We got hit by remnants. 75 mph winds in Louisville, 65-70 mph here in Lexington. We had a few people killed in KY. Lots of trees and powerlines were knocked down. We always get remnants of hurricanes here in the mid south / lower midwest. Katrina and Ivan dropped tons of rain on us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sam06pr Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 wow. wouldn't it be safer to at least keep the employees sheltered until the storm passed away? (unless it would of last until the nights hours) Pretty interesting how the leftovers of a storm can still cause such things Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DBru Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Holiday World went under the same situation, only about 1 hour earlier. I live about 3 hours South-west of you (between Louisville and Owensboro), and the storm hit us hard around 11:00, and went on for about an hour. As of 12:00am this morning, 60% of our area had no electricity, and we are still under a "State of Emergency". (No one is allowed on the streets without good reason... and no school!) Winds reached around 75mph here, and we were in shock of how scary the situation was. I can't imagine being caught in a hurricane... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VegasCoaster Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 That's quite a story. Oddly enough, I live in Austin, TX now and we got absolutely nothing from Ike. No rain, no wind, nada. We were supposed to be right in its path but it just kept curling north. Glad that you got out of there safely and hopefully none of the medical carts had any serious injuries to contend with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kennyweird Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Wow man, that sucks. It was pretty windy last night here in Pittsburgh, but no where near as windy as what you described. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rct3man777 Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^ The remnants of a tropical system can travel and, in this case, merge with cold fronts to form pretty bad conditions. Just because the hurricane status is gone, doesn't mean the storm is gone. I know, it's just that ohio is clear across the country. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carnage Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^ Have you ever seen how big a hurricane is? Can easilly reach that far Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cfc Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^ The remnants of a tropical system can travel and, in this case, merge with cold fronts to form pretty bad conditions. Just because the hurricane status is gone, doesn't mean the storm is gone. I know, it's just that ohio is clear across the country. The remnants of Ike merged with a cold front that is currently sweeping east--that could cause some pretty intense weather (a warm front slamming into a cold front). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jumboshrmp Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 And Florida got absolutely nothing.... It didn't even rain here! All we had was a nice cool breeze for three days. I love hearing storm stories though, that was a good one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Airtime&Gravity Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 One one hand, Kings Island has probably never had a tropical system strike it, but if you have one coming at you, close then it would probably be a good idea to close the park before it hits. Good thing you weren't hurt JZ, and hopefully your friend recovers soon. It is amazing how far this system traveled, and there was some bad flooding up here in Chicago/Northwest Indiana. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carnage Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 It is amazing how far this system traveled, and there was some bad flooding up here in Chicago/Northwest Indiana. Not necessarily how far it traveled, but how strong the leftovers were. Even this far north we tend to always get the leftovers from hurricanes. But most times they're just a day or two of light/moderate rain. Not really that much different the normal rain we get this time of year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dandaman Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^Were you one of the 70,000 Ontarians who had their power knocked out, Paul? Ours flickered pretty much for all of Sunday but a total blackout (luckily) didn't happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PKI Jizzman Posted September 16, 2008 Author Share Posted September 16, 2008 See? At 12:30 it was just a normal cloudy, windy day..... 3:50PM - This is coming up behind the Eiffel Tower next to Backlot. You can see trees down, things bent, and lots of crap everywhere. This is coming up that little hill to ET; you can see a big evergreen uprooted, and lots of dibris all over. Here's a close up. You can see that light post tilted, and the inflatable thing is like, being tethered down. At this point, we started running out of the park haha. Woahh...crazy blurred shot. I think the wind was like, shaking my car. Sorry guys but that's all I got haha. -JZ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
supertrooper Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 I thought the first time you said "dibrees" it was simply a typo...but you said it again, so I thought I would point out that it is "debris". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scruffy Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Sorry to hear about your time at Kings Island. Sunday around 2pm a big old tree fell on my car so no more trips to Kings Island again this year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carnage Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 ^Were you one of the 70,000 Ontarians who had their power knocked out, Paul? Ours flickered pretty much for all of Sunday but a total blackout (luckily) didn't happen. I think I had a couple quick brownouts of about a second. Only long enough to reset my cable box, and make my PCs UPS kick in for a second. Other then that we just had a mild steady rain. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted September 16, 2008 Share Posted September 16, 2008 Cincinnati got completely killed by Ike. We've still got 500,000 people without power and I'm one of them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
disneygurlz2s Posted September 17, 2008 Share Posted September 17, 2008 Yep, we just got power back last night about 10 pm, and live in the vicinity of Kings Island. I have to defend the park in saying that I don't think anyone anticipated the "dry" windstorm that came up Sunday afternoon. Yes, there had been bad weather (more in the form of rain/thunderstorms which we never got) predicted for Sunday late afternoon/evening, but no one anticipated the hurricane force winds. Unfortunately, the local media (especially the radio media-which for those of us lucky enough to have battery powered radios/boom boxes) did not begin alerting the public to the conditions until most people were already out in it. It was right around the same time JZ mentions the park closing that any "official" high-wind warning went out. As of when I am writing this, there are still a quarter of a MILLION Duke Energy customers without power in the Greater Cincinnati area. Shari (Power out for 56 hours) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllenA07 Posted September 17, 2008 Share Posted September 17, 2008 These storms can be huge, and can make it across the entire country. A few days before Ike, west Texas got slammed by the remainder of a Pacific tropical storm. It didn't really make any news because Ike was 2 days away from hitting, however we got over 10 inches of rain in 24 hours, it was enough to cause flooding and basically shut down the area where I live. I don't think many people can debate that west Texas is near the Pacific Ocean, it just goes to show how large these storms can be and how far they can make it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ginzo Posted September 17, 2008 Share Posted September 17, 2008 I'm pretty sure that my power is still out at home. I'm going to check in a few hours, but the power company is still reporting an outage for my address. But hey, they might have it fixed by Saturday! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coolhandluke Posted September 17, 2008 Share Posted September 17, 2008 Yeah, Dayton got smashed too. We had a quarter million buildings lose power, and we still have around 20,000 out. We were lucky enough to just have flickers off and on, though my aunt and uncle one mile down the road are still waiting for their power to come back. And I know DP&L (Dayton's power people) sent a bunch of their workers down to Texas to help down there, thus causing a longer-than-normal wait up here because of the reduced number of workers here. Good to see you're alright, JZ, and hope all goes well with your friend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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