At least one person is dead and sixty others have been injured after a tourist attraction at a famous beauty spot in China malfunctioned. The Detian waterfall in South China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region contains an attraction known as the ‘Magic Carpet’ ride, which allows visitors to sit on a conveyor belt which allows them to take in the scenic view as it transports them uphill. But at 1:56 pm on Saturday the ride suddenly started moving backwards and sent passengers tumbling downhill, crashing into eachother and causing a crowd crush.
A witness, who claimed on a social media platform that she was riding the Magic Carpet at the time of the incident, told the Global Times that the carpet was transporting people upwards at the time of the crash, with each person sitting around 50 centimetres apart. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a webbrowser that supports HTML5video She said: ‘It suddenly stopped and started sliding down. The crowd in front and behind collided due to inertia and piled up together.
The safety panels on both sides were also broken at that time.’ Another witness at the scene told the Beijing News he heard many people screaming at the time of the accident. People were stuck but the ride kept running, resulting in some people having the skin ripped from their arms.
Chinese media outlet the Red Star News reported on Sunday that a tourist who also had taken the carpet just prior to the accident said that althoug.