Waterslide not inspected

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — No government officials conducted a safety inspection of a new waterslide at Six Flags St. Louis before a woman said she suffered whiplash last month from the force of the “Typhoon Twister”" that featured a five-storey drop and a “45-foot zero gravity wave wall.”

Officials said it’s no surprise that the slide didn't have to pass a government safety review, even though an estimated 80 million people flock to about 1,000 water parks in the U.S. every year.

The ride is exempt from a Missouri law regulating amusement rides passed in 2004.

“If it has mechanical things to get you up ... then it’s a ride,” said Mike O’Connell, a spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety. “If you don't have that, and if it’s basically gravity, it doesn't meet the definition of a ride,” he said.

Representatives of other water parks around the state said they also operate with little to no state oversight.

Six states don’t regulate the amusement park industry at all, according to the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions: Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, Wyoming, and Utah. Oversight is lax in many others.

The permit the Typhoon Twister received from the county public works department only reviewed the ride’s machinery and plumbing.

A Six Flags press release promoting the Typhoon Twister said participants would "careen wildly into a 125-foot long whirlpool bowl" before "plummeting down an enclosed five-story drop" and then shooting up a “45ft. zero-gravity wave wall to experience moments of weightlessness.”

The day after it opened on June 22, Sondra Thornhill said she was injured on the slide.

Wearing a neck brace, Thornhill told KMOV-TV she had whiplash after the slide flung her into the air.

“My whole body came off the raft,” she said.