Eight people rescued from Chester Zoo monorail after power failure

Jul 29 2009 by Nick Moreton, Birkenhead News

Eight people rescued from Chester Zoo monorail after power failure

EIGHT people had to be rescued when the monorail at Chester Zoo broke down on Saturday morning.

Fire crews were called after the monorail ground to a halt shortly after 11am.

The three families on board – five adults and three children – are believed to have been its first customers of the day.

An electrical failure led to a short circuit in the part of the track the train was on, causing a loss of all power.

Two appliances from Cheshire Fire and Rescue arrived at 11.30am, but could not get close enough to the broken down monorail cars, so a hydraulic platform and live rescue unit were called as additional back-up and the rescue eventually started at around 12pm.

No one was injured in the incident, although the monorail remained closed for the rest of the day.

Wirral News photographer Mike Price was at the zoo with his family. He said: “They started getting people off the train about half an hour after the fire brigade arrived.

“It was the first train of the day then that was it, none ran for the rest of the day.

“But they all seemed in good spirits when they were rescued.

“It was just unfortunate for them that it happened over a part of the zoo which had no animals in, so they had nothing interesting to look at.”

Martin Clancy, head of marketing at the zoo, said: “There was an electricity fault on the monorail and normally it’s a case of re-setting it and it can carry on on its way. Unfortunately, that wasn’t successful this time.

“All the people who had been stuck were fine. We checked to see if they were OK and gave them a few refreshments, and they seemed happy enough. It’s just one of those things and was dealt with very quickly.”