Six Flags worker hurt in 20-foot fall

[CoasterDave316]

An employee at Six Flags Great America in Gurnee was injured Tuesday after falling 20 feet while on the job, authorities said.

Gurnee Fire Department Battalion Chief Tim Tanner said the incident involving the 52-year-old man happened about 1:10 p.m. He said the veteran employee was taken from Great America in a helicopter to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge.

Tanner said the man was performing routine maintenance on a locomotive when he fell about 20 feet from the top of the train to tracks below. He said park guests were not near the area where the man fell.

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[RagingBullFan]

Hopefully he is ok.

I've worked with him for a long time and he's a really nice guy, and I can see where this could have happened with the train.

Best of luck to him and the rest of the Zone 1 maintenance crew.

[FParker185]

it's good to see that he wasn't badly hurt as in life threatening injuries, I know of a few fall deaths where someone fell from less than 10 feet and died. SFGAm is really going to get to know the people at OSHA in the very near future though as working at a height of anything over 6 feet requires fall protection.

[cycamps]

Hopefully he gets better soon; he's lucky that he didn't get hurt worse.

[RagingBullFan]

We were inspected quite a lot by OSHA earlier this year. No major violations were found.

As to the fall protection part, in some aspects of the job even while working at heights over 6 ft. fall protection is a hazard to the worker itself, and is sometimes required not to be worn.

Having talked to my contacts, the worker injured will be OK, he's just in quite a bit of pain right now.

He has 30 years experience at the park and definitely knew what he was doing.

[LAFFfan4lyfe]

It's good to hear that he will be okay. It could have been a lot worse. He's a lucky one.

[rielyboy10]

Does anyone know here the Six flags great america employee Tim the operator who worked by Deja'vu most of the time