Statue of Liberty crown tour limited to 5 mins

New York, May 11: The Statue of Liberty crown tour which will resume from July 4 has a time limit on it! Reports suggest that the visitors will be allowed no more than five minutes to enjoy the view from the site and no more than eight people will be allowed to enter the crown at a time.

The revelation comes just days after U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced that the crown, closed after the 9/11 terror attacks, would reopen to the public for two years and will again close for safety modifications for up to two years.

Commissioned by the National Parks Service and executed by Baltimore-based Hughes Associates Inc., the new fire safety and emergency evacuation study has revealed that about 240 people could safely make the trip in a day.

"Given a delay of five minutes in the crown, it was determined that the maximum throughput is roughly 30 visitors per hour," the New York Daily News quoted the report as saying.

Salazar also informed that the visitors will be allowed to go up the 169 steps leading to the crown in groups and will be accompanied by a guide.

The report also quotes a 2001 engineering study that was conducted while the crown was still open. It had concluded that though there were fir protection issues, the concerns were not serious enough to limit public access.

ANI