After 20 years, a fearsome monster called the Rattler is closing down at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. It’s a good time to reflect on the park’s flagship roller coaster — and how it suffered from excessive speeds when it opened in 1992.

These internal memos and letters were uncovered in lawsuits filed against Fiesta Texas by riders who complained of head and neck injuries after riding the Rattler during the early 1990s. They show how the ride’s manufacturers were struggling to control the Rattler’s high speeds, even after opening day.

Meanwhile, the public knew little about the problems — and was falsely told the ride was tamer than it actually was.

Related: How to contact an investigative reporter in Texas

Years later, the Express-News wrote a series of stories about amusement ride safety and published the main material in the documents. Here are three key records (click on the bottom-left corner of each record for a full-screen view):

Excessive speeds of the Rattler

Dana Morgan, who built the Rattler’s train cars, criticized the decision to open the ride without adequate testing. He also criticized design changes that increased the height and steepness of the first stomach-churning drop.

Publicly, Fiesta Texas was saying riders enjoyed gravitational forces of “3 g’s,” or forces three times the earth’s gravity. Morgan’s letter said the ride was actually exerting forces of 5 g’s on riders, which increased the risk of injury.

Rushed construction at Six Flags

Dana Morgan, who built the Rattler’s train cars, criticized the decision to open the ride without adequate testing. He also criticized design changes that increased the height and steepness of the first stomach-churning drop.

Publicly, Fiesta Texas was saying riders enjoyed gravitational forces of “3 g’s,” or forces three times the earth’s gravity. Morgan’s letter said the ride was actually exerting forces of 5 g’s on riders, which increased the risk of injury.

Questionable excess g-forces

Rattler builder Mike Black pointed out to Fiesta Texas owner USAA that design changes had increased the ride’s height and produced “questionable excess g-forces.”

So how was all this resolved? After two years, Fiesta Texas finally lowered the height of the Rattler’s first drop. Fiesta Texas insisted it had nothing to do with the scores of personal injury lawsuits filed against the park.

The Rattler is now a tamer ride — but still a tricky one. On its final days of operation, the cars froze yesterday and 20 riders were stranded for 45 minutes.

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Here’s a recording of my radio interview last week with KTSA’s Paul Alexander.

We talked about a San Antonio Express-News investigation of the thrill ride industry, and how the public can check a little-known government database that tracks amusement ride injuries in Texas. The Express-News posted the injury data online for anyone interested in checking the safety record of a theme park or carnival.

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Ten years ago (wow, I’m getting old) I wrote a series of stories about the safety record of San Antonio’s major theme parks — Six Flags Fiesta Texas, SeaWorld San Antonio, and Splashtown. I learned state officials keep a little-known database that tracks amusement-ride injuries in Texas.

The database isn’t perfect. The injuries are self-reported by parks, and there’s missing cases of devastating, bone-breaking injuries, as my story published today points out. And the injury reports are written by ride owners, so it’s their version of events.

Related: Telling stories with data: Police chases and drug smugglers on the Texas-Mexico border

Despite the limitations, the injury data can be an interesting starting point for someone who’s wondering, just how safe is my local theme park or carnival?

Over the years, B.J. Morris, the friendly amusement-ride administrator at the Texas Department of Insurance, has e-mailed me updates to the data. Meanwhile, the data geeks at the Express-News have been doing a good job posting public data online for readers to slice and dice. Last year, we posted a salary database of city employees and it was wildly popular. It got me to thinking, maybe I need to stop hoarding that ride injury database on my computer’s hard drive and put that puppy in the public realm.

Here’s the result: A database of amusement ride injuries that’s available to everyone. For the first time, you can go online and look up injuries by ride owner and injury type. Many reports describe minor bumps and scrapes.

But one thing that struck me was the sheer variety of painful ways people get hurt at theme parks and carnivals. One report describes a 10-year-old girl who got her finger caught in a gate at Six Flags Over Texas.

Her fingertip was amputated.

You can look up these records yourself and see what exactly goes wrong at your favorite theme park. Just keep in mind you might not be getting the whole story.

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You can check the safety record of Texas theme parks and carnivals by searching a unique database of 1,800 reports detailing broken bones, chipped teeth and other injuries.

Officials at the Texas Department of Insurance collect injury reports from amusement ride owners and type the information into a database. We obtained a copy of the data and posted it online this afternoon. The major parks include Six Flags and SeaWorld.

Related: Theme park injuries go unreported

The data is part of a story scheduled to be published this Sunday in the San Antonio Express-News that examines the safety-record of the thrill-ride industry. More to come.

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