2 Yellowstone Workers Fired For Peeing In Geyser

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Two seasonal Yellowstone National Park concession workers have been fired after a live webcam caught them urinating into the Old Faithful geyser.

Park spokesman Al Nash says a 23-year-old man on Tuesday was fined $750 and placed on three years of unsupervised probation for urinating, being off trail in a restricted area and taking items from the area. The man also was banned from Yellowstone for two years.

The second employee's case is pending.

The park's dispatch center was called after someone watching a webcam on the geyser saw six employees leaving the trail and walking on Old Faithful on May 4.

The geyser was not erupting at the time.

Xanterra Parks & Resorts general manager Jim McCaleb says the former concession workers were hired at the Old Faithful Inn and that such incidents were rare.

Comments

[Elizabeth44]

I worked in Yellowstone for two summers in the 60's. These guys got caught, but I can't believe they were the first. As employees we did a lot of things we weren't supposed to do. The area around Old Faithful didn't use to be all that fragile. Not like most geyser, hot pot, and other thermal areas.

[kcmookie]

Confucious say:

It is better to be pi$$ed off, than pi$$ed on.......

[TorhamZed]

It's about time that all these young hoodlums learnt that this is AMERICA, and you will never get away with urinating here!

If you want to be all young and wild and rebellious, you need to work all that excess energy out in torturing people, because that's OK, but not urinating! Got that??

[AllenD]

Can you use urine to waterboard people with?

[sfden50]

Thar She Flows!!

[Bitsko]

If the headline writer had actually read the story, they would have known these concessioneers were not actually fired.

[suec03]

The first sentence of the article says they were fired. Firing them would make sense, since geysers are delicate ecosystems as well as dramatic displays. The one who has been banned from Yellowstone for two years would have to leave any job he had within the park boundaries.

[HumanityEqualsLaw]

OMG,so very horrible,lighten up people.

[lisakaz2]

Finally! An important story...lol. I needed something silly. What were these guys thinking? Unless they have prostate or bladder issues, stooopid.

[Bitsko]

LOL Brings new meaning to the word geyser.

[Defunct]

But commit war crimes all you want.

[Cynth]

Maybe the Parks Service should be in charge of looking into the various war crimes allegations. We might just get somewhere. :-)

[RationalityPlease]

The people here who think this is funny make me ashamed to share the same species.

[lisakaz2]

C'mon. It's not an earth-shattering issue. And the park IS named Yellowstone.

[Ira7]

Count me among those that think it's hilarious.

[LauraD]

Ditto.

The only think that would have been funnier is if natural selection had done it's damn job and the geyser would have erupted mid-stream.

[Bitsko]

Two guys whizzing into a steaming hot spraying hole in the ground is comedy gold!

[suec03]

I visited Yellowstone decades ago, but as I recall, there are living organisms that have adapted to the hot water in geysers. If so, such organisms should not have their aquatic environment polluted by human urine.

[kinmin]

This just in ... two buffalo were shot for peeing on the ground in Yellowstone.

[sunbeltvoter]

In related news, a moose was seen peeing in the environmentally sensative river. Gov. Palin immediately guest helicoptered in and shot it..

In other news, "You Betch it's Moose"Burgers are a new menu addition at the Old Faithful concession stand.

[suec03]

An ecosystem can handle the urination of native animal species. I don't think bison seek out hot water geysers to relieve themselves. It takes stupid humans to do that.

[OceanSize]

If you've ever been to Yellowstone, you know that leaving the trail in the area where Ol Faithful is, is a big deal. The geology there is so unique and fragile and alien. Leaving the trail was a bigger transgression than the urinating. The punishment seems fair.

[stanschurman]

Nobody said they should have done it, but the punishment seems unduly harsh. The oil & mining companies pollute thousands of acres and their CEOs get invited to the White House. It's just this punitve attitude of Americans as if a good stiff fine or prison sentence fixies everything.

[alaskan]

They are NOT being punished for peeing! It's rightly ILLEGAL to walk that close to a geyser, because there is a fragile crust surrounding the opening that people can fall through -- and DIE.

A geyser may look like a dirt mound, but walking on it is about as smart as walking on top of a pool tarp ... and the water in the pool is boiling and full of chemicals.

Idiots like this risk the lives of park rangers every year because they have to go fish their corpses out of boiling thermal features.

[woundedduck]

Fired? They should've gotten to have their pictures taken with the Interior Secretary for such an awesome pee. Come on! This is America--we celebrate this kind of stuff!

[butlerdi]

No, in Amerika you celebrate your freedom by attempting to criminalise every single action which smells of minor non conformity. It is really sick.

[suec03]

We go to all the effort to set aside unique natural resources like Yellowstone for generations to enjoy. We try to teach children that humans are part of the ecosystem and to respect that role. We create trails and informative signs and hire rangers both to protect the resources and to explain them to visitors. Anyone over the age of five should have been taught to stay on the trail and to hold their bodily fluids while visiting a delicate natural feature like a geyser. I am sure the living organisms in the geyser pool don't appreciate being peed on.

[WilliePilgrim]

The peeing, if it were done at night and on the sly, doesn't bother me, but taking things is serious.What did they take? A piece of the resource? That's way worse.

[Chubbster]

From the front seat of his Hummer, Arnold Schwartzennegger watched me take a piss next to my car in a muddy ski area parking lot. He didn't seem happy. People don't realize that piss is totally sterile. Hindus even drink it!

[ibivi]

Urine is not totally sterile if you're sick. OK but aside from that I don't totally understand why this is a crime. Do they use the water from the geyser for drinking or other purposes? Anyway, I'll look it up.

[suec03]

Aren't there adapted species of microorganisms and possibly algaes that live in the geyser pool? A geyser is not like a sterilized chlorinated swimming pool. It is an ecosystem that must be kept in balance, protected from pollution, including urine which may contain traces of pharmaceuticals and other substances the urinator has ingested.

[arspar183]

Gives a new meaning to the phrase ...there she blows!!!!