MONTGOMERY COUNTY — The Montgomery County Fair is in full swing, but before letting people in on Tuesday, ride safety operators made sure the rides were safe for fairgoers.
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Ron Dean, Chief Ride Inspector for the Ohio Department of Agriculture, walked the grounds, checking that everything looked good, hours before the fair opened on Tuesday.
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“We’ll go through the ride and look at everything, make sure everything’s assembled properly,” Dean said.
He explained to News Center 7 that one of the last checks he and his team do is an operational check.
“That’s where we would start up all the rides, turn on the lights, make sure all the stop functions work,” Dean said. “If there’s specific safety features on a ride, we test those to make sure that those are all working properly, and then, once that final operational inspection is done, they get a green light, and they can continue to operate for the public.”
Dean said the high temperatures forecasted this week can cause rides to shut down.
He added that rides fairgoers will see at the fair this week have been checked by the Ohio Department of Agriculture several times since they’ve been licensed to operate in the state. The ride owners are also required to do daily checklists.
Dean said the safety of these rides is no different than the rides at amusement parks.
“They tear the rides down in the wintertime, and they assemble them,” he said. “They’re just not moving them to a different location, so the requirements are all the same.”
The Montgomery County Fair runs through Sunday.
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