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Volume 2, No. 10. June 14, 2002

Kennywood unboughed
When Andy Quinn made it back to his beloved park 15 minutes after it had endured the brunt of a freak weather event at 6:45 p.m. (18,45) May 31, the human toll had already been determined—one woman was dead and 58 people injured, most when the pavilion roof of the Whip collapsed. Looking around at what seemed like hundreds of downed trees, sheared limbs and debris around and against buildings and rides, Quinn, the director of community relations at Kennywood, could only wonder what other structural damage had been done to the West Mifflin, Pennsylvania, amusement park.

The ultimate answer: not much.

The National Weather Service determined that a macroburst had ripped through Pittsburgh and its suburbs, a violent downdraft of wind stretching more than two miles wide (microbursts cover areas less than two miles). That Kennywood saw no more casualties than it did when the park was nearly full with two school district picnics that Friday evening was testament to its disaster preparation procedures.

The park had just two minutes before reached the highest state of alert, ordering the shutdown of all rides, including the indoor attractions. “We cease their operation because we need to concentrate on the safety of the guests,” Quinn said. That became urgent as the storm heightened, with employees getting patrons under shelter wherever they could. “Our team members were pulling people into their stands and into their stores. They had people stuffed into back rooms,” Quinn said. “Unfortunately, when it rains here, one of the rides you go to is the Whip.”

Kennywood remained closed Saturday but employees used their regular shifts to help clean the debris from their stations and ready attractions for reopening. Quinn estimated that some 75 trees were heavily damaged, and the park probably lost a third of those. As for rides, one of the sweeps on the Paratrooper was bent, and the cars on the Whip were battered and bent, but not as badly as expected. “It’s amazing how little damage the cars took, and I think it’s because they were so well built back in 1918,” Quinn said. “The worst on any of them was a rounded, back upper corner, which is oak, that was broken.”

He was most amazed at what crews discovered buried beneath the five huge sycamores that had fallen on the 1975-built logjammer. The flume ride emerged unscathed. “Very little, if any damage,” he said. “All around the cafeteria building, the oldest in the park, trees went down; the building didn’t get touched. Even the front of the arcade, which is all glass, didn’t get a scratch.”

Nevertheless, the cleanup and recovery lasted through Monday, the park reopening last Tuesday four days after the storm. All picnics lost that weekend have been rescheduled, Quinn said, including the park’s biggest picnic of the season, the carpenters union with more than 10,000 attendees.

The storm's recovery illustrates how Kennywood never really gets knocked off its feet because in all the years surviving depressions and fires, and now an 80 mph (128 km/h) gust of wind, the park has never lost its head.