I would love to hear the thoughts from anyone in the metallurgical community.
I was a stress analyst in aerospace and I think my conclusion is the same as any one else's: this is fucking bad and a gross oversight. Safety factors in place are a testament to the foresight of the civil engineers who analyzed this, such that even though this support was carrying no load, the roller coaster still ran without killing anyone (for now). This is a massive failure of inspections and must have been visible before the fracture severed the entire beam.