ORLANDO, Fla. — A technical crew with The Orlando Eye safely evacuated all 66 stranded riders from the largest Ferris wheel on East Coast, an incident that shut down the attraction that towers 400 feet over central Florida, authorities said.

Orange County Fire Rescue spokeswoman Kathleen Kennedy told The Associated Press no one was hurt following the Friday afternoon incident and all were taken off in an operation lasting about three hours.

Andrea Alava, a public relations manager for The Orlando Eye, issued a statement that the attraction had shut down as a safety precaution before the team went to a backup operation. She said its teams carried out the actual evacuation, not firefighters as some reports initially suggested.

At approximately 3:45 p.m., the operating systems for the Orlando Eye indicated a technical default with the system that monitors the wheel position of the Orlando Eye. As a safety precaution, the attraction is designed to automatically shut down if communication with this system is interrupted,” Alava said in an emailed statement.

Kennedy said the attraction had initially stopped for more than 45 minutes.

Power was restored via a backup generator and a technical team at the attraction, backed by the firefighters, carried out the task of removing riders from the enclosed capsules after each was brought down to the platform, officials said.

“All guests are safely evacuated,” Kennedy told AP by phone Friday evening shortly after the last rider was removed at about 7 p.m.

Six elite rescue climbers with the fire rescue squad were dispatched but weren’t needed for a climb, Kennedy said. They were part of a special operations team that had climbed the attraction in training but – she said – “thankfully” such an aerial operation wasn’t needed.


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