Iceberg wall collapses at Titanic museum and injures 3 visitors, Tennessee officials say
An iceberg wall collapsed at a Titanic museum, injuring three people at the Tennessee tourist destination, officials said.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with those who were injured, as well as their family and friends,” Titanic Museum Attraction owners John and Mary Kellogg Joslyn wrote Monday night in a Facebook post.
The museum, located in Pigeon Forge, said it’s temporarily closed after the wall came down on Monday. The incident sent the three wounded visitors to a hospital, though the museum said it didn’t know the extent of their injuries.
“Needless to say, we never would have expected an incident like this to occur as the safety of our guests and crew members are always top of mind,” the museum owners wrote on Facebook. “We take pride in the quality of our maintenance and have measures in place to ensure that appropriate safety guidelines are upheld.”
The museum said it’s designed to show visitors what it would have been like to be on the Titanic, a British ship that sank in the North Atlantic in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. More than 1,500 people died.
The tourist destination near the vacation spots of Gatlinburg and Great Smoky Mountains National Park calls itself one of the largest Titanic attractions on the planet.
“Each guest entering the ship will receive a boarding pass of an actual Titanic passenger or crew,” the museum says on its website. “Feel their spirit presence in the galleries where over 400 personal and private artifacts are on display. Many are on display for the first time in the world.”
This story was originally published August 3, 2021 at 7:16 AM with the headline "Iceberg wall collapses at Titanic museum and injures 3 visitors, Tennessee officials say."
