YELLOWSTONE, Wyo. (ABC4) – A young woman from Rhode Island is recovering after being seriously burned at Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone National Park Thursday.
Park officials say the 19-year-old concessions employee suffered second – and third-degree burns to 5% of her body. She was taken by life flight to the Burn Center at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center. The incident is now under investigation.
Yellowstone National Park rangers are now reminding visitors the ground in hydrothermal areas like Old Faithful are thin and fragile with scalding water just below the surface. Everyone must remain on the boardwalks and trails and remain extremely cautious around thermal features.
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According to the park, this is the first significant injury in a thermal area in 2021. In 2020, a three-year-old suffered second-degree thermal burns to the lower body and back. A visitor who illegally entered the park fell into a thermal feature at Old Faithful that year as well.
In 2019, a man fell into thermal water near the cone of Old Faithful and suffered severe burns. Two years prior, a man sustained severe burns after falling in a hot spring in the Lower Geyser Basin. In 2016, a man left the boardwalk and died after slipping into a hot spring in Norris Geyser Basin.
Yellowstone National Park officials say one person died and two received severe burns from falling into a hot spring in the Lower Geyser Basin in August 2000.
