Video shows sudden surge left no time for escape.
In sweltering mid-summer weather, a trip to the local water park can be a great way to cool off. Unfortunately, for dozens of visitors to Yulong Shuiyun Water Amusement Park, in the city of Longjing in China’s northeastern Jilin Province, their plan to beat the heat ended up with the park’s attractions giving them a beating instead.
Like a lot of similar facilities, Yulong Shuiyun Water Amusement Park has a wave pool. The park seems particularly proud of the intensity of its attraction, gong so far as to call it the “Tsunami Pool.” Unfortunately, last Monday that turned out to not really be much of an exaggeration, as this video, shot inside the park, shows.
After sending a series of normal-sized waves swimmers’ way, suddenly a much larger mass of water swells. Several times higher than the heads of the people in the pool, the giant wave doesn’t give them a playful push, but slams into them simultaneously from the front and above, carrying the first row of swimmers crashing into the people behind them. People further back can be seen struggling to get out of the way of the advancing mix of water, bodies, and flat rings, but you can only run so fast in water, and it’s only the guests at the far end of the pool, opposite where the wave formed, who aren’t caught in the mess.
In total, 44 guests were injured, including three who suffered broken ribs or legs.
To further illustrate that this wasn’t supposed to happen, water can be seen spilling out of the pool and briefly flooding the surrounding walkways. The Longjiang city government has denied early rumors that operator error was to blame, and is instead saying that its initial findings show that a power cut damaged the Tsunami Pool’s electronic equipment and caused a malfunction, though it’s not currently clear how a loss of power had the end result of making the machine-produced waves larger than intended.
The park was closed for a day for an inspection and investigation, but is reportedly now open for business again. There’s no word as to whether or not the Tsunami Pool is up and running again, but if it is, odds are it’s quite a bit less crowded than usual.
Sources: TBS News via Jin, South China Morning Post
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