Nov. 3 (UPI) — Two young girls were in intensive care at a hospital after they were thrown from a Ferris wheel at a festival near Baton Rouge, La.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girls, both under 13 years old, around noon Saturday were ejected from the ride’s basket while it was rotating and they fell 20 feet onto a steel platform in New Roads<\/a>, which is part of Pointe Coupee Parish, about 40 miles northwest of Baton Rouge. A third girl clung to the basket and was rescued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n WAFB-TV reported<\/a> one girl has a possible brain bleed and the other has broken bones. They were taken to the Children’s Hospital in Baton Rouge, NBC News reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sheriff Rene Thibodeaux told NBC News that the girls were sitting in the basket when it tipped over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “As it was going around, it was just, like, stuck at an angle and they flipped out of it,” Ronald Brasseaux, who witnessed the incident, told WAFB-TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said he felt unsafe riding the same ferris wheel the previous day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “They need to take this thing down,” he told the TV station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Brasseaux said he believes the basket’s hinges might have gotten stuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ride didn’t have any restraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I feel like it should be seatbelts on there, because, mind you, it’s just a gate on there, like somebody can easily fall out, a child can easily just open the gate and then step out,” witness Madison Fields told WBRZ-TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another visitor, Eddie Jones<\/a>, told WAFB: “We were in line to buy tickets to the Ferris wheel, and I heard a girl scream, and I looked over, and the Ferris wheel car was kicked over. I don’t know how it got in that position, but it was stuck. Yeah, I’ll probably never get on another Ferris wheel.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n He posted video<\/a> of the accident on Facebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The ride and another one nearby were closed to the public amid an investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The state’s fire marshal’s office is required to perform safety checks on rides and attractions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ferris wheel is operated by Crescent City Amusements, based in Slidell, La.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2023, a ride operated by the company, the Ring of Fire, stranded riders upside-down<\/a> for more than three hours in northeastern Wisconsin. An investigation found a lighting transformer lodged into the track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ferris wheel was part of the annual Harvest Festival, which supports the local agriculture-based community,” according to its website<\/a>. It ran from Friday through Sunday on False River.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Ferris wheel is named after its inventor, civil engineer George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., who designed the ride for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n