The group ran toward the shrill voices. Lance Buchi and Tyler Montague had just pulled themselves from 178° F. Cavern Spring. Sara Hulpher continued to flounder in the near boiling acidic water. Risking their own lives in the darkness, the group pulled Sara out of the seething spring. What had been a day of fun had turned into an experience that could only be conceived of by a Hollywood scriptwriter in a movie like, The Bone Collector, or a vicious pit demon from the bowels of hell.
Incredibly all three were still conscious despite being horribly injured. Lance and Tyler walked back to Fountain Flat Drive with assistance and were driven back to the Old Faithful Lodge. Sara, who had been fully submerged in the water, was in grave condition. Carrying her back to the parking lot her friends put her in the waters of the Firehole River where she had been swimming just a couple of hours before, to help soothe her injured body.
Lance, Tyler, and Sara aren't the first victims of a thermal pool accident in Yellowstone. To date 19 people have died in the thermal regions, including seven children. The last death occurred in 1988 when a cross-country skier fell through into a hot pool. In 1981 a 24-year-old man willingly leapt to his death in Celestine Spring in a hopeless attempt to save his dog. During all of 1999, eight people were injured in the thermal regions of Yellowstone. Never before had three people been injured at the same time, and never before had three people fallen into a pool and been so gravely injured.
When rescuers arrived about thirty minutes after the accident, the critically injured trio was prepared for transport to West Yellowstone, Wyoming. Sara Hulpher, seeming to know she was mortally injured, made several requests to her friends and drifted into unconsciousness. Lance and Tyler both told rescuers they thought they had come to a creek while navigating in the darkness and holding each others hands attempted to jump across it, not knowing they were actually jumping into ten-feet deep Cavern Spring. The mystery of how three people willingly jumped into a boiling pooling of water started to become clearer.
Arriving in West Yellowstone the three were flown by advanced life support helicopter to Idaho Falls, Idaho. From there they were transferred to a waiting airplane that took them to the Salt Lake City Burn Center. Lance and Tyler had come home but the precious golden hour for treatment in a trauma center had long gone by.
Fifteen hours later, with third-degree burns over her entire body, Sara Hulpher could no longer keep up the fight, her organs shut down, and she quietly became the 20th victim of Yellowstone's thermal pools.
Doctors painted a grave picture for the critically injured Lance Buchi and Tyler Montague. Lance was suffering from third-degree burns over 97% of his body. Tyler was suffering from third degree burns over 90% of his body. Their physicians gave them less than a 10% chance of surviving the next 48 hours.
Since August 21st the hours have turned into days. At the Lower Geyser Basin in Yellowstone National Park the scene of the accident is blocked off with yellow tape. People continue to walk through the same area where the tragedy happened. Back in Salt Lake City Buchi and Montague continue the fight of their lives. With the initial risk of organ failure now in check, doctors paint a slightly more optimistic picture with their survival odds at 30% to 40%. However at least three months of hospitalization, possibly 15 to 20 surgical procedures, and two year of physical therapy lay ahead of the badly burned pair.
Meanwhile at the Old Faithful Lodge things continue as normal. Thousands of guests pass through the Amfac cafeteria ordering meals and buying large souvenir sports bottles filled with soft drinks. Orders are taken for dinner, and the tables are cleared made ready for the next wave of hungry tourists. Beds are made, floors are cleaned and things are being prepared for summers last fading days in Yellowstone.
People sit at the tables that Sara was taking orders at and Lance was clearing just a short week ago. People are sleeping in rooms that Tyler had cleaned. Their friends who witnessed a nightmare are probably back to work, and coping the best they can with the swirl of emotions inside. Their roommates in the dorms they lived in continue their routines around three empty beds. Even Old Faithful continues to erupt every 40 to 70 minutes in a display of scalding hot steam and water and college will start this fall. Yet despite the continuing routine something doesn't seem quite right. The afternoon wasn't supposed to end that way.
|
Canoe
