KALISPELL — Every summer, families line up for the thrill of carnival rides at the Northwest Montana Fair. Although this summer, incidents across the state have put ride safety in the spotlight.
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This week, a drive tire fell off the Zipper ride at the Billings Fair, evacuating riders from the attraction. No one was hurt.
This comes after Clayton Phillips died in June. He was thrown from a swing ride at a carnival in Butte.
Fair Manager Sam Nunnally said safety is his top concern.
"Safety is priority. I want this place to be a fun and inviting place and safe place for people to feel comfortable to come here."
Nunnally said he brought in an independent inspector this year because of community concerns.
"We normally will look at all the rides, inspect them from our eyes and make sure they are running and operating. But this year because there was a lot of concern we wanted to go with an independent inspector. But the majority of the rides had no safety things."
The people who run the rides say their safety routine starts long before the first ticket is torn.
"We come out an hour before opening and go through our checklist, climb the rides, crawl over them, look for any spot that could be a problem," carnival owner James Krie said.
Carnival operators say these are big machines with a lot of moving parts, and the moment something feels wrong, the ride stops.
"These are mechanical rides and things do happen. If there's anything at all wrong with the ride we shut it down and we leave it down until we really have time to really look at it," carnival owner Riley Cooke said.
For fairgoer Talon Borgen, the rides are part of what makes the fair worth coming to, but he said he keeps his eyes open.
"If I see anything that feels sketchy or something, I'm just not going to go on it."
