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

[Progressive Pete]

While I of course find this childish, I fail to see the big deal here.

[alaskan]

Geysers are extremely HOT and dangerous, and the earth that surrounds them is very fragile.

"Writing his 1995 book Death in Yellowstone, park historical archivist Lee H. Whittlesey sifted through National Park Service records to identify 19 human fatalities from falling into thermal features. The victims include seven young children who slipped away from parents, teenagers who fell through thin surface crust, fishermen who inadvertently stepped into hot springs near Yellowstone Lake, and park concession employees who illegally took "hot pot" swims in thermal pools.

The most recent thermal fatality occurred in 2000. One moonless August night, 20-year-old Sara Hulphers, a park concession employee from Oroville, Washington, went swimming with friends in the Firehole River. Accompanied by two co-workers for Old Faithful businesses, Hulphers returned by hiking through Lower Geyser Basin. They carried no flashlights, and the three thought they were jumping a small stream when they fell into Cavern Spring's ten-foot-deep boiling waters. Hulphers went completely underwater and died several hours later from third-degree burns that covered her entire body. Her companions survived, but the two men spent months in a Salt Lake City hospital recovering from severe burns over most of their bodies. "

From:
http://www.yellowstonepark.com/MoreToKnow/ShowNewsDetails.aspx?newsid=41

[Progressive Pete]

OK so what? Sounds like these two wanted a Darwin Award.

Far be it from me to stop them...

[Quaoar]

More info and pics here at the appropriately named website peer.org:
http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=1196

[skeptique]

... where you can find the streaming webcam...

[kgb999]

Ouch.

[EgyptianMysterySchool]

http://www.nps.gov/yell/photosmultimedia/webcams.htm

[wadenelson1]

Old Faithful was subsequently fined $750,000 for peeing on Wyoming. Efforts to ban the geyser from the park reportedly failed. The geyser reportedly threatened to throw a temper tantrum and vulcanize North America.

[astridalailama]

lol