The next episode of HBO’s smash-hit series The Pitt might have drawn from a Bay Area disaster. Widely hailed as the “most medically accurate” hospital drama, season one of The Pitt swept the 2025 Emmys. The highly anticipated second season premiered in January and is now two-thirds through a fifteen-episode arc. Last season culminated in a deadly mass casualty event based on the 2017 Las Vegas shooting that killed 60 and wounded at least 413. The events of this upcoming episode (2x10) strongly parallel a lesser-known tragedy that struck the East Bay in 1997.
A celebration turns tragic
The worst waterslide collapse in the US happened right here in the Bay Area on June 2, 1997. In Concord, California stands the Six Flags Hurricane Harbor waterpark, known as Waterworld USA when it opened in 1995. The new, successful park attracted many patrons, including Napa High School’s graduating class of ‘97. The seniors at Napa High School customarily celebrated their milestone achievement with an outing to Manteca Waterslides (1974–2004). Each year, the students pulled off a senior prank of sorts called “clogging.”
“A few would start down one of the meandering slides that emptied into a pool at ground level. Once on the slide, they would grip the sides, holding themselves in place. Then more students would jam in behind them, followed by more, and still more joining the joyous pigpile. Finally, bursting with life and youth and under a glorious late spring sun, the students, some of whom had been friends since kindergarten, would let go and slide down en masse. One last adventure before being scattered to the wind. One last carefree memory.” — Gary Peterson, East Bay Times
The slides at Waterworld were single rider only. No rafts or mats. Just you, water, and fiberglass. The waterslides at Manteca were built into the hillside and therefore supported by the earth. Not like those at Waterworld. They were built on stilts, some rising over forty feet off the ground. The fiberglass tubing was meant to carry one rider at a time. It’s why waterpark attendants make you wait until the rider ahead of you exits before letting you go. But a mob of enthusiastic teenagers eager to go down in Napa High history did so, for the wrong reason.
“As soon as I felt myself starting to fall, my brain shut off.”
“The sound of fiberglass cracking is ingrained in my mind forever,” Alynda Davis, née Franco, told the East Bay Times on the 20th anniversary of the tragedy. At approximately 2:45 PM that day, an ear-splitting noise resounded through the park, then screaming. The Banzai Pipeline waterslide, designed to support one occupant at a time, held beyond thirty times its capacity. 33 teenagers on the cusp of their adult lives went over the jagged edge of the fractured slide instead. One girl died. “I remember starting to fall and trying to grab onto something. It was like the platform was just an arm’s length away, but I couldn’t reach it. As soon as I felt myself starting to fall, my brain shut off.”
Vietnam War veteran and retired Concord Police Captain Jim Jennings was briefly overwhelmed by the scale of the disaster. One of the first responders to arrive, Jennings encountered a bloody scene that took a moment to adjust to.
“It was momentarily somewhat overwhelming. I saw a lot of obviously hurt people laying on the ground. I had five officers already and more coming. Initially, you have that momentary, ‘Holy crap.’ But then you’re thinking, I’ve got to make some order out of this.” (East Bay Times)
EMS transported the injured to various nearby hospitals, confusing panicked parents unaware of their kids’ individual destinations. Remember, in 1997, cell phones were still hot commodities. In any decade, it’s a miracle more victims weren’t paralyzed (one 17-year-old girl suffered a severed spinal cord). Alynda Davis made a long but full recovery, regaining her ability to walk after using a wheelchair for mobility. She and her surviving classmates still graduated, though with one less friend to celebrate with. 18-year-old Quimby Ghilotti suffered blunt force trauma to her head and died at the scene.
Spoilers ahead!
On Thursday, we’ll see if/how much the waterslide disaster in The Pitt resembles the tragedy in Concord. Conditions in the Emergency Room are already chaotic. A ransomware attack has all local hospitals on system lockdown, meaning they cannot admit new patients. Where does this lead them? To The Pitt, of course, which, anticipating the malware attack, has taken its systems offline. They’re running handwritten charts and orders like it’s 1997. Labs are missing, x-rays go unread, and patients suffer the consequences.
Last week’s episode (2x09) ends our time in the ED with its cherry-red batphone ringing ominously. The camera follows Nurse Donnie (Brandon Mendez Homer) out of the ED and into the perpetually crowded and poorly cooled waiting room. It’s the 4th of July in Pittsburgh, and it’s hot—fucking hot, and humid as balls. Donnie catches a glimpse of the TV. Breaking News: Emergency crews are out responding to “a deadly water slide collapse at a local water park.” Multiple injuries and at least one death is already confirmed. The injured are “being airlifted to the hospital by helicopter.”
"Oh shit," Donnie says to himself. "They're all coming to us."
