On Thursday morning, an SUV with five people inside careened off the road in Yellowstone National Park and crashed into a hot, acidic geyser. Everyone survived with non-life-threatening injuries. The vehicle sank under nine feet of hot water before crews pulled it out.
In a press release from Yellowstone, park officials say the crash happened at the Semi-Centennial Geyser thermal feature near Roaring Mountain between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Junction. There’s currently no information about how or why vehicle left the road in the first place.
Yellowstone says all five people inside the vehicle were able to get to safety without help. Officials transported them to the hospital but none suffered from life-threatening injuries. The water in the inactive geyser is hot, but not hot enough to burn upon contact, thankfully.
“The Semi-Centennial Geyser thermal feature has acidic and hot surface water temperatures (ranging around 105 degrees Fahrenheit),” states the press release.
Law-enforcement rangers closed both lanes of the roadway near the crash site for about two hours while they worked to extract the vehicle from the geyser.
This incident comes one week after a deadly shootout at Yellowstone. Law-enforcement rangers shot and killed a suspect with a weapon who intended to carry out a mass shooting on the 4th of July.