High school students were responsible for causing last week’s deadly water-slide accident at Waterworld USA, an independent safety inspector has concluded.
After completing a technical inspection of the site, engineers from the equipment’s manufacturer, Whitewater West of Richmond, British Columbia, said on Thursday that operators at Waterworld USA could not have done anything to prevent the deadly collapse.
They blamed the accident that sent one student plummeting to her death and injured 32 others on the dozens of Napa High School seniors who crowded onto the 40-foot fiberglass flume to set a record.
“There is nothing to indicate there was anything wrong with the slide,” said Whitewater West President Geoff Chutter.
John Hunsucker, president and owner of National Aquatics Safety in Houston, said “it wasn’t a malfunction of the slide. It was the weight on the slide.”
Even so, local attorneys said the park operator and the slide manufacturer still could be held legally responsible for the tragedy.
“There’s enough liability to go around,” said San Francisco personal injury attorney Eric Abramson. “The manufacturer probably bears some responsibility, the park operator and the kids themselves.”
Even if the slide was properly constructed and intended for use by one person at a time, it should have been built to withstand “foreseeable misuse,” Abramson said.
Park operators also could be held liable for inadequate staffing or training of personnel in areas such as crowd control. Others pointed to possible problems with the construction, design or setup of the slide.
On Thursday, scores of investigators probed the wreckage of the 40-foot Banzai Pipeline slide owned by Oklahoma City-based Premier Parks.
Those conducting independent investigations included the city of Concord, the park, the park’s former owners, some of the park’s builders and local police.
Fifteen teen-agers remain hospitalized.
One issue on many minds is whether the students could have been stopped.
Hunsucker said on Thursday he has not spoken to the lifeguard on the platform at the top of the slide who reportedly was yelling at the students, “Stop! Stop! One at a time!” but that he thought the park had an excellent safety plan in place and to the best of his knowledge park employees tried to stop the rush of students from entering the flume.
