Missouri State Fair safety process: How it’s changed

Officials at the Missouri State Fair said they reassess their safety process every year and make changes as necessary.

ABC 17 News Investigates traveled to the fair to find out how past tragedies have played into the decision-making process.

Fair Director Mark Wolfe said it’s important to react to any accident that might happen.

“Accidents happen, that’s just part of life,” he said. “The goal is to always learn from that, I think, and do it better and so that’s what we work on all the time.”

The stage was redone at the Missouri State Fair after the 2011 stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair. Changes were also made in response to a deadly ride accident at the Ohio State Fair.

“What it did for our industry is learn from it,” Wade Shows owner Frank Zaitshik, who owns the carnival company used at the Missouri State Fair, said. “In that particular case, corrosion was the cause of that accident. It’s raised a whole new awareness of corrosion and what could possibly happen. So we spent almost a million dollars this last year on taking things apart and inspecting it for corrosion, fixing anything that was corroded.”

Wolfe said public safety at the fair is the “top priority.”

“We spend the entire year combing this facility looking for things [that could go wrong]. We take notes from what happened at the last fair…we try to address it before we come back the next year.”

ABC 17 News will have a full report on this story at 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.