Slide builders accused of ignoring design flaws

In a rush to build the world’s tallest water slide, the operators of a Kansas park glossed over their own findings that the nearly 170-foot-tall ride had major design flaws, skirted basic engineering standards and sent riders airborne in a way that could injure or kill them, investigators said.

Yet the operators of Schlitterbahn Waterpark of Kansas City, Kan., opened the ride, Verrückt, in July 2014 — only 20 months from its conception to grand opening.

At least 14 riders were injured on the slide in a string of accidents that culminated in August 2016, when a 10-year-old boy was tossed off a raft and decapitated when he hit a metal pole.

In an indictment unsealed last week, authorities said top Schlitterbahn officials knew that the slide, which closed after the boy’s death, posed serious dangers for riders — so much so that company officials feared for their own safety when they went on it.

On Friday, the office of the Kansas attorney general announced that Schlitterbahn Waterpark and Tyler Austin Miles, its former operations director, had been charged with 20 criminal counts, including involuntary manslaughter, aggravated endangering of a child and aggravated battery.

“Verrückt” is German for “crazy” or “insane,” and the slide was built to thrill.

Riders climbed 264 steps to the top before sitting in a raft that plummeted from a high point of about 17 stories and then soared over a crest on their way to a runoff pool at the bottom. Netting covering the length of the slide, supported by metal poles, was meant to keep riders from falling off.

The indictment portrayed a company that ignored its own warnings and hurried to construct a towering water slide in an effort to impress the producers of a Travel Channel show, “Xtreme Waterparks,” which featured the slide in an episode.