California's Probe Of Disneyland Death Nets $12,500 Fine

An investigation into the accident that killed a Duvall man and injured his wife during a Christmas Eve visit to Disneyland has unearthed a pair of "serious" safety violations, the state of California reported yesterday.

Disneyland's misuse of equipment and its failure to train a key employee led to the Columbia Sailing Ship accident that killed Luan Phi Dawson, 33, and seriously injured his wife and the employee, according to California's Division of Occupational Safety and Health.

The investigation found that Disneyland did not fully train the park employee, Christine Carpenter. The agency fined the amusement park $12,500 - the maximum allowed - for what it categorized as two serious violations that park officials "knew or should have known" carried the potential for "serious physical harm."

Dawson, a computer programmer for Microsoft, was killed while he waited to board the ship, a natural-gas-powered ride that cruises a man-made river on a submerged rail. Carpenter, 30, who was untrained in operating the ride, slung a dock-anchored mooring line around a cast-iron cleat on the still-moving boat, the report said.

The bolts securing the cleat sheared off, hurtling the 9-pound piece of metal into the waiting crowd, where it struck Dawson and his wife, Lieu Thuy Vuong, and Carpenter.

Vuong, 43, suffered head injuries and Carpenter suffered a broken ankle.

Vuong, who lives in Duvall with the couple's 6-year-old son, declined to comment yesterday.

Under Disney's own operating procedures, the mooring line was to be attached to the cleat "only if the Columbia is making an approach slow enough to be able to stop before the bow line is taut," the report said. But that decision, the report said, is a judgment call based on the experience of the dockworker. And on that morning, Carpenter had appointed herself, despite her lack of training, to work the dock alone until another employee arrived.

According to the report, this violated Disneyland's own policy manual, which states that before an employee is qualified to operate the Columbia "it is essential that he/she completes a comprehensive 8-hour training program . . ."

A second violation involved use of a faulty cleat. Jim Brown, the local district manager for the state agency, suggested that there had been problems before with the cleat, and that they should have been corrected.

"The bolts were bent sometime prior to this bigger accident," he said.

At any rate, the cleat wasn't intended to stop the mock sailing vessel, just hold it in place, he said.

Disneyland spokesman Ray Gomez challenged the agency's report, saying that Carpenter had been trained adequately. Park officials are considering an appeal.

Dawson and Vuong moved to Duvall about a year ago after living for several years in Rainier Valley. Dawson escaped from Vietnam as a youth, graduated from the University of Washington and was raising an extended family of children.

Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Jake Batsell, the Los Angeles Times, Reuters and The Associated Press is included in this article.