A North Carolina amusement park took passengers on its high-speed 'giga' roller coaster for 'maybe 6 to 10 days' while one of its steel supports was visibly cracked, labor official says

• A labor official says an amusement park ran a roller coaster for days while it had a cracked beam.
• One of its steel pillars was visibly fractured in a video posted on June 30 by a park visitor.

An amusement park in North Carolina was operating a high-speed roller coaster for "maybe six to 10 days" while one of its steel pillars was fractured, a state labor official said.

The Fury 325 roller coaster, which can take 32 passengers at a time, was shut down on July 1 after staff at the Carowinds amusement park were notified of a crack at the top of one of the ride's steel pillars.

Josh Dobson, North Carolina's labor commissioner, told the Associated Press on Friday that the crack might have been visible as early as 10 days before the ride's closure.

"It looks like maybe six to 10 days prior, some pictures had been taken that shows the beginning of the crack, and then by obviously last Friday, the thing was completely severed," Dobson said.

A visitor to Carowinds, Jeremy Wagner, posted a video on June 30 that showed the Fury 325's track wobbling as a coaster car sped past the cracked pillar.

Wagner told CNN that park staff seemed "nonchalant" when he alerted them to the damage.

"I felt there was no urgency in any of the employees," he told the outlet.

Carowinds' website describes the Fury 325 as the "tallest, fastest, longest giga coaster in North America" and compares it to "an angry hornet chasing its target."

The ride reaches up to 95 miles per hour with a peak height of 325 feet and features a "190-foot tall barrel turn" as well as an 81-degree drop, the website says. Visitors must be at least 4 feet 6 inches tall to ride the coaster.

A representative for Carowinds told Insider in a statement Thursday that the ride's manufacturer, Bolliger & Mabillard Consulting Engineers Inc., designed the ride with "redundancies in place to ensure the safety of guests in the event of an issue" like the cracked beam.

The park has ordered a new support beam that is expected to be delivered within the next week, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson said staff would then examine the Fury 325 with an accelerometer alongside testing and inspecting the ride for "500 full cycles." The park also intends to add drones with cameras to "access and inspect hard-to-reach areas," they said.

Carowinds did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours.