An investigation into the accident has blamed mechanical failure.
The 10-year-old girl who's lucky to be alive after she was tossed from a Ferris wheel has described the terrifying moment she plunged 50 feet to the ground.
Kayla Reynolds broke her arm after falling from the ride at the Greene County Fair in Tennessee last week. Her 6-year-old sister, Briley, suffered a traumatic brain injury and remains hospitalized in stable condition.
Read: Boy, 3, Remains in Critical Condition After Fall From Roller Coaster
Kayla and her parents shared their ordeal at a hospital press conference Tuesday.
“When it started to happen it was just really scary,” Kayla said. “It was terrifying.”
Her parents said they were forced to watch helplessly from the ground as the basket carrying their daughters started to tilt.
“I turned to him and I said, ‘are you watching this?’” mom Kimmee Reynolds said. “We just watched them tumble out one by one. It was a nightmare.”
Investigators say a mechanical failure was to blame for the fall. One basket tipped into another, sending the girls 50 feet to the ground below.
"You could see their faces from the ground. You could tell that they were terrified," the girls' father, Jason Reynolds, said. "They knew something bad was about to happen."
Kayla was alert and talking as she was taken to hospital but the couple said they thought they'd lost Briley.
"We thought she was dead honestly," Kimmee Reynolds said.
Photos taken from hospital show the little girl's swollen face. On Tuesday, she was upgraded to stable condition.
Read: Man Says His Harness Broke on Water Slide That Killed 10-Year-Old Boy
A 16-year-old, who is unrelated to the girls, also fell from the ride and is now in stable condition, according to affiliate WVLT.
After the incident, the Greene County Fair organizers said in a statement: "We would like to extend our thoughts and prayers for those injured tonight at the fair. We are deeply shocked and saddened."
The accident occurred just a day after the 10-year-old son of a state lawmaker suffered a fatal neck injury on a slide at a water park in Kansas.
Back in May, an 11-year-old Nebraska girl was partially scalped when she slipped in her ride seat at a carnival run by a different company and her hair was caught in a spinning mechanism.
Watch: 10-Year-Old Son of Kansas Politician Dies on World's Tallest Water Slide
