Reporting from Wichita, Kan. — The Water Wall fountain was always intended to draw people to this city's struggling downtown waterfront. Situated on municipal property in front of the Hyatt Regency, Wichita's swankiest hotel, it was part of a $5-million redevelopment project designed to support the Hyatt when it was built about 12 years ago.
The wall is a 300-foot-long graceful arc of tawny stone that gently reaches west toward the Arkansas River, water tumbling over its facade.
On the east end, the wall is flush with the sidewalk, but as the ground on its south side slopes toward the river, the wall gets higher and higher until it ends, finally, with a long drop.
The Water Wall is meant to be soothing and contemplative, but on a hot summer day recently, Kenda Fischer, an ICU nurse, and her mother, a retired ICU nurse, stared at it in horror.
In particular, the women -- Hyatt guests who live three hours away in Hays, Kan. -- were focused on three boys playing in a trough about 2 feet wide and 1 foot deep along the top of the fountain. From the trough, water cascades over both sides of the wall.
There, in that narrow channel, Earl Crabtree, 13, Israel Reynolds, 12, and Calvin Cole, 10, were frolicking without a care.
They floated along as if the trough were a lazy river. They straddled it, legs apart, bare feet on the narrow, slippery sides in order to scoot past a hidden pump that recirculates the fountain's water.
Sixteen feet below them, shallow water pooled around a jumble of jagged boulders.
Fischer, 38, appeared to be holding her breath.
"As an ICU nurse, I don't get nervous," she said. "This makes me nervous. I am thinking someone is gonna fall off the edge, and I'm gonna have to do some nursing on my day off."
Her mother, Sandy Ochs, 68, gaped: "Oh, my God."
What would happen if the boys fell?
"I would think they could have a fractured skull, a fractured vertebrae," Fischer said. "With paralysis ensuing."
"Or instant death," her mother said.
"Yeah," Fischer agreed. "Death would be the biggest one."
Earl said he and his pals had walked to the Water Wall from their homes nearby. His parents were not with him, he said, but they knew where he was.
Calvin positioned his swim goggles over his eyes, dunked his head into the water and wiggled around.
"It's OK," Earl said. "We don't do nothin' crazy."
