by Mary Rupert
The Kansas Department of Labor today released a letter that says an inspector working with an insurance company visited the Schlitterbahn water park on June 7, 2016, and found that the rides met their underwriting guidelines “with no disqualifying conditions noted.”
The water park in Kansas City, Kan., was the site of a fatal accident on Sunday, Aug. 7, that claimed the life of a 10-year-old boy, Caleb Schwab, who was riding the Verruckt, the world’s tallest water slide.
Parts of the Schlitterbahn water park reopened to guests at noon Wednesday, but the Verruckt water slide will be closed for the rest of this season, Schlitterbahn officials announced.
The Verruckt water slide has been in operation for about two years.
There was a disclaimer in the letter from the certified safety professional: “This survey reflects the conditions observed or found at the time of the inspection only, and does not certify safety or integrity of the rides and attractions, physical operations, or management practices at any time in the future.”
The records released included a ride list of all the rides at the water park, with checkmarks next to them.
This was not an inspection by the state of Kansas; it was a private inspection done by a private company for an insurance company, Haas and Wilkerson.
The Kansas Department of Labor on Tuesday requested that Schlitterbahn provide it with amusement ride records for the Verruckt showing the inspection records, plus certificate of inspection, certification of the inspector’s qualifications, results of testing, the operational manual, testing recommendations and inspection guidelines.
Kansas state law requires the owners of the park to do an annual inspection by hiring a qualified inspector – called a “self-inspection.” These records are required to be kept available at the owner’s location, not at the state of Kansas offices. The state law allows the state to check the records and to inspect the rides.
There was no record of a state inspector checking the Verruckt ride recently in the records that were released today by the Kansas Department of Labor, which is in charge of overseeing safety of amusement park rides.
The request from the Wyandotte Daily was for all records pertaining to inspections of the ride over the past two years. According to a statement from Kansas Department of Labor, the operations and maintenance manual of the Schlitterbahn has been sent to KDOL but it is not a public record because of an open records exemption regarding proprietary information.
