RESCUE workers dug frantically through the layers of fat in an emergency straight from the pages of The Simpsons, but were unable to save the lives of three people killed in just the latest deadly incident at a massive San Diego waterslide.

Mayor Jerry Sanders said desperate pleas for help had been sent by text message from staff and park visitors stuck in, unbeknownst to them, the temporarily blocked Boxing Day Tsunami waterslide.  More desperate pleas were received when an enraged and presumed intoxicated father, Marvin Funderburk, began blindly flailing at staff members with an aluminum trident wrenched from the grasp of a full-sized figure depicting Poseidon near the emergency station after his son Cleve was ejected violently from the ride.

"They got a message from the head lifeguard there. They were dumbfounded," Mr Sanders said from the dais in the Mayor's office.

Park officials temporarily suspended the ride this morning until they can determine how a human can become wedged in tube measuring 60" in diameter.  Stuart Grissom was the man who became lodged in the slide, bystanders approximated his weight at near 400 pounds.  He is recovering from multiple fractures at an undisclosed local hospital in stable but hungry condition.  The mass of water behind Mr Grissom ejected him and four other park visitors from the ride at an estimated velocity of 400 feet per second.

	Several children were launched from the Boxing Day Tsunami waterslide at an estimated 400 fps

"All they are finding are dead bodies," said radio reporter Jimmy Angay from the scene.

A massive wall of water slammed into six-year old Cleve Funderburk, knocking him airborne for twenty feet and pinning him against the cellulite covered buttocks of 53 year old Janice Daugherty trapping him under several folds of flab.  Witnesses and TV footage depicted a scene of utter devastation, with only Cleve's crumpled body and the tops of a half-dozen bikinis visible.

Staff Sergeant Jason Headly, recently back from Iraq, likened the sound of Grissom leaving the slide to that of a mortar being fired.  "The mortars we use aren't so large, 90mm," Headly explained, "but the insurgents use these old Soviet 162mm mortars that make a loud 'thump' you can feel from ten of fifteen clicks.  It sounded like a 162mm mortar being fired."

There were no up-to-date figures for waterslide fatalities.

Adriano Fuego, director of civil defense operations in the area, said the recent spate of accidents at the park are a statistical anomaly.

In January, six swimmers drowned when a pump malfunction in the wave pool created a deadly undertow.

And in November of last year, three children were crushed when a vending machine tipped over. 

The civil defense office said the waterslide holds enough water to cover an area of nine square kilometers one inch deep.

Several relatives told the station they had received short text messages from park visitors once they were trapped in the ride after the flow of water stopped, most appealing for help. The messages stopped once Mr Grissom and the wall of water behind him became disgorged.

 

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