Jul 13, 2007 5:44 pm US/Pacific
Great America Wave Pool Closed After SJ Boy Drowns
SANTA CLARA (CBS 5 / AP / BCN) ―
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Wave pool at Great American where a 4-year-old boy drowned Thursday.
CBS 5
The Paramount Great America amusement park wave pool where a young boy drowned remained closed indefinitely on Friday while authorities continued to investigate the death.
Despite the presence of lifeguards, 4-year-old Carlos Alexnoro Flores of San Jose drowned Thursday afternoon in the recently opened wave pool, according to the Santa Clara County coroner's office.
The boy was unconscious when park lifeguards pulled him from a two-foot-deep section of the Great Barrier Reef about 2:30 p.m., said Bill Lentz, Great America's general manager.
The 355,000-gallon attraction, which opened over Memorial Day, simulates the sensation of ocean waves. The wave pool does not have age or size restrictions, Lentz said, and the park provides life vests and inner tubes for visitors to use. The pool's deepest section is six feet.
There were six lifeguards on duty, but witnesses told the San Jose Mercury-News that the pool was so crowded that it might have been difficult for the lifeguards to see that the boy was in distress.
"We were just commenting watching our children that there were an awful lot of people in the water," said Sonia Menzies, of Mountain View, who was at the park with her 7-year-old daughter. "There was no way a lifeguard could see a child under the water until the waves stopped."
Lentz said he did not know if the boy who drowned knew how to swim or if the boy, who was at the park with his mother and his sister, was being supervised at the time of the pool accident. "Our thoughts and prayers are going out to the family in this unfortunate situation," Lentz said.
The boy was taken by ambulance to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Santa Clara, where he was pronounced dead after additional attempts to resuscitate him failed, said Dave Parker, a spokesman for the Santa Clara County Fire Department.
The wave pool and several adjacent sections of Great America's 13-acre Boomerang Bay water park were cleared and closed Thursday afternoon so Santa Clara police and park security officers could investigate the incident, Lentz said. Officials were also reviewing the park's policies and safety procedures in the wake of the incident.
Boomerang Bay has a number of water-oriented rides and activities, including a wave pool, a heated lagoon, a 900-foot-long river and two 30-foot-tall water slides.
This was the first drowning at the theme park, but not the first death.
The last reported fatality at Great America happened eight years ago when a 12-year-old boy fell from the Drop Zone Stunt Tower. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Thursday's drowning was the fifth fatal accident at the park since it opened in 1976.
(© CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The Associated Press and Bay City News contributed to this report.)
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