Crash exposes dangerous safety flaw at Intrust Bank Arena; county investigating
An early morning pickup crash Monday has exposed a dangerous flaw at Intrust Bank Arena — concrete bollards that not only can’t stop a speeding car, but can become dangerous projectiles themselves.
Sedgwick County Manager Tom Stolz said he’s asked the management company that runs the county-owned arena for an engineering study to find out why a bollard failed spectacularly during Monday’s crash and what more needs to be done to protect pedestrians in the plaza at the north entrance of the arena.
“I’ve been in the security game a long time,” said Stolz, a former deputy chief of the Wichita police and former director of the city/county building-safety department. “When a facility puts determents in to avoid harm — that’s the reason for a bollard, to stop vehicle traffic from entering into a pedestrian way — at the least my expectation is that the bollard will provide some level of safety for people.”
In Monday’s crash, that wasn’t the case. The white Dodge pickup rolled right through the bollard, careened through the two layers of wrought-iron fencing surrounding the smoking area and smashed into the arena, buckling a brick wall.
The bollard itself shot across the plaza, smashing a large plate-glass window just to the left of the north entrance.
“This thing made it all the way to the building and hit the building with pretty good force,” Stolz said. “I know (the pickup) was going a high rate of speed and it’s a heavy vehicle, but it’s a normal vehicle, a street-rated truck. It wasn’t like a tank or a military vehicle.”
Only the driver of the pickup was injured, because the plaza was deserted at 12:45 a.m. Monday when the accident occurred.
But before arena events, the area would be jammed with people waiting to go through security screening and into the facility. The smoking area is usually packed both before events and during intermissions.
The pickup driver fled the scene before authorities arrived. Sheriff’s deputies later arrested Nelson A. Chamagua, 34, of Wichita, who they believe was behind the wheel, said Lt. Benjamin Blick.
Chamagua was booked on suspicion of criminal damage to property, leaving the scene of an accident and driving under the influence, Blick said.
Stolz said the bollard dislodged in the crash had been installed as part of new security measures during an expansion of the north entrance in 2017, done to accommodate the 2018 March Madness NCAA basketball tournament.
“The whole facility pretty much has a perimeter of bollards around it,” he said.
He said he’s requested information from ASM Global, the company that operates the arena under contract to the county.
“They were the one that bid this and as facility manager, it’s their job to enhance security,” Stolz said. “I’d like to see the study of the amount of impact these bollards were designed to take. . . . I want to see what the level of safety is that these bollards were able to provide at an engineering analysis level.”
He said he wants to know if the bollards are designed to withstand an ordinary vehicle traveling at 70 mph, and if not, what level of safety they’re supposed to provide.
“When we get that analysis, then we can determine if this was just a failure — that it should have stopped it and it didn’t — or they’re not rated appropriately and maybe the arena needs to look at some secondary measures,” he said.
The study and drafting of recommendations for improvements will take place over the next few weeks, Stolz said.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the arena is currently running on a limited schedule of events, hosting attendance-limited Wichita Thunder minor-league hockey games and a centralized vaccination clinic in the concourse.
Monday’s accident didn’t disrupt the vaccine distribution because the entrance for the vaccination station had already been moved to the other side of the building, where there are more handicapped parking places, county spokeswoman Kate Flavin said.
This story was originally published January 28, 2021 at 5:01 AM.
