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In 2016 the world’s largest waterslide was quickly shut down when 10-year-old Kaleb Schwab was decapitated on his decent. Schlitterbahn water park first opened in Kansas City, Kansas on April 30th, 2011. Five years later, the park will never truly be the same.
The nearly 169 foot tall slide, Verrückt, was intended to drawl mass population to visit the waterpark. The slide gained a reputation for being taller than Niagara Falls. The attraction took a long time to be built and the opening date was pushed back three times due to safety precautions. It was no wonder people were weary of taking the ride down.
The team in charge of building Verrückt was full of engineers and mathematician, yet none of them saw what was coming. The details of the death of Kaleb are hard to pin down, but the blood pooled on the slide speaks for itself.
This tragedy could have been prevented by a number of reasons. The first being a revision of Kansas’s safety requirements for waterslide parks. The state has a reputation for low standards of safety. The reports from the park don’t even have to be given and approved by the state. This combined with poor employee training on how to properly ride down the slides lead to Kaleb’s death.
Schlitterbahn remains open, but Verrückt remains closed realizing a drop 169 feet tall should be left to roller coasters.
