Man seriously injured after falling into Yellowstone Park hot spring

The Morning Glory hot spring in the Upper Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming on May 14, 2016. PHOTO: AFP

WYOMING - A man suffered serious burns after falling into a hot spring at Yellowstone National Park in the United States.

Gervais Dylan Gatete, 21, of Raleigh, North Carolina, is the first person reported to fall into a hot spring at the National Park in Wyoming this year.

He was with seven other people when the incident happened. Just before midnight on Tuesday (June 13) the group flagged down park rangers who helped transport Mr Gatete to hospital, BBC reported.

He is in a stable condition at a hospital in Salt Lake City.

Yellowstone Superintendent Dan Wenk said in a statement that the park's thermal features are dangerous.

The ground nearby is fragile and thin, with boiling hot water just beneath the surface.

Visitors are warned to stay on the trails and boardwalks in geyser basins.

Last year, a 23-year-old man died after attempting to soak into a hot spring.

Mr Colin Nathaniel Scott was checking the temperature of the spring when he slipped and fell in. His sister filmed the accident on her mobile phone.

Rescuers could not recover his body due to a lightning storm, and it dissolved almost entirely by the following day. His slippers were one of the few pieces of evidence recovered.

More than 20 people, including seven children, have died in the park's thermal pools since 1870, where temperatures can reach 121 deg C.

Yellowstone, which spans across some 3,500 square miles across Wyoming, Idaho and Montana, contains more than 10,000 hot springs, mud pots and geysers.

The area of the park where the hot springs and geysers are located is on the edge of the famous Yellowstone caldera, BBC said.

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