Some visitors at Canada’s Wonderland amusement park in Vaughan, Ont., were trapped on rides after a severe thunderstorm caused a power outage over the weekend.
In a statement emailed to Global News on Tuesday, Grace Peacock a spokesperson for Wonderland, said on Saturday at around 12:40 p.m., staff began to close rides due to a “sudden, severe thunderstorm approaching the park.”
“A power outage occurred shortly after and several rides, including the Behemoth roller coaster, halted with guests onboard,” she wrote.
Peacock said ride operations and maintenance staff “worked to evacuate guests as quickly and safely as possible.”
A video posted to TikTok by a user Lynn Shepherd, appears to show people strapped in to seats on the Behemoth rollercoaster as strong winds and rain move in.
“Oh my god they’re just stuck on it!” someone can be heard saying in the video. “They’re just stuck there.”
According to Peacock, the guests on Behemoth were evacuated “about 30 minutes later.”
A post on the park’s website said Wonderland does not operate its rides when lightning is nearby, and has a “lightning detection system” to tell operators when lightning is near.
“Rides are staged to be shut down according to this information, based on their height and dynamic,” the post reads. “So it might look like clear skies over Leviathan when we temporarily close it, but our staff could be seeing something very different on the radar.”
While the article specifically mentions lightning, Peacock told Global News the procedure is “the same for severe storms.”
“We immediately begin to shut down rides based on ride height and dynamic,” she said.
Peacock said no injuries were reported at the park as a result of the storm on Saturday.
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