Deb Chamberlin, 52, of Rockford, vice president of the school board in the west Michigan community.
Deb Chamberlin, the 52-year-old school board vice president, died after she stepped over a rock retaining wall to take a photograph, lost her footing and fell down an embankment before falling off a cliff.
Nash said Chamberlin and family members -- her husband, son, Alex, and daughter, Kelly -- had pulled their car into a viewing area near Tower Fall shortly before the accident occurred around 10 a.m. Mountain Daylight Time. After the fall, Nash said her husband flagged down a passing motorist, who called 911.
Park rangers arrived soon after and, with a scope, spotted Chamberlin on the floor of a steep narrow canyon near the Yellowstone River. Nash said they could not get a raft in to rescue her because the spring snowmelt had raised the river level too high.
A ranger eventually rappelled down to Chamberlin and found she had died, Nash said.
Park rangers used a stretcher suspended from a helicopter to pull Chamberlin from the canyon shortly after 3:30 p.m.
He said the retaining wall was there to provide "a measure of safety" for visitors, but it was not unusual for people to step over it to get photographs.
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-30/1150612889137260.xml&coll=6
Gravity 1, common sense 0.
Unfortunately, she is disqualified from the Darwin Award because she has already reproduced.
However, I think she does merit an honorable mention.
Stupidity *should* be fatal, or at least very painful.
She stepped over the wall or was encouraged to step over the wall?
I read this earlier. Very sad. It's beyond me why she would cross the retainer wall.
There is a lesson here.
Better safe than sorry.
Dear God, please help this family as they mourn the loss of their loved one.
Did she at least get the pic while on the way down?
Back a ways in my family tree... great or great-great grandparents... There is a notation that the woman's first husband "died in fall from cliff". Shortly thereafter, she married the first husband's brother.
Now... maybe they found comfort in each other after the death, but I think it's possible he was pushed. :~D
Not sure why I just thought of that.
Condolences to this woman's family, certainly.
She probably couldn't see the cliff from her vantage point on top. You don't get a sense of vertigo and so she probably didn't think it was that dangerous. But once you're on that embankment, there's no guarantee you can stop your slide toward the edge... **shiver** ... Poor lady.
Deb Chamberlin, 52, of Rockford, vice president of the school board in the west Michigan community.
So she climbs over a retaining wall above a canyon to get a better picture and neither she, the husband or the kids thinks "maybe that's a not very good idea"?
There are several well visited places in Yellowstone whre this might have happened...and as sorry as I am for the family, the question is why did she do something like that?
Me, I have a healthy fear of edges. Maybe too healthy, my husband might think (as there are some mountain roads I could only be driven across if blindfolded!) Gravity isn't a suggestion. Some truths aren't really that relative. You lose your balance at the edge of a cliff, you will fall and get injured or die.
I would be surprised if there isn't a lawsuit, since everybody in our culture seems to think there has to be someone to blame when we act stupid, but the truth is some places are dangerous. Lots of places in Yellowstone are. There are places near Old Faithful that are extremely hazardous if you get off the paths. There are wild animals who will hurt you if you don't pay attention to their unease, but there are picture takers who get badly injured or killed quite regularly there by getting too close or agitating the animals. If they live, they will get a ticket for harrassing them, too.
Are we so in tune to our reality being an extension of video games and TV that we don't realize that hazards are really hazardous?
Uh, hello, it is a CA-LIFF with a 500 foot drop!!!
On a long ago trip to the Grand Canyon, I was appalled at the number of people who disregarded posted signs and stood in places they shouldn't, taking pictures.
Just because people have brains, doesn't mean they use them.
Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, just a few of the spots I've visited. While they are beyond beautiful and so worth any time spent there, they are inherently dangerous places to be. I saw people step over the walls to creep forward to get "better pictures" of the Grand Canyon. I watched people get out of their cars and feed wild (though they appear tame) bears marshmallows by hand. I witnessed a group of people go tearing off across a meadow in Yellowstone toward a bull moose. They all had cameras in hand. He stood and watched them for a minute or two and then headed straight for them. It was a footrace back to their cars. Yellowstone is a strange, grand place full of boiling hot springs, bubbling and roiling mud flats, geysers and other assorted stuff just like that. Running across what appears to be open ground there, let alone right at large wildlife, is beyond stupid. Seen it, feel sorry for the rangers.
That's just one of the many ways people get themselves killed at Yellowstone. I grew up just a few miles from the park and during the summer our local paper was filled with such incidents. Tourists who ignored signs, fences and warnings were attacked by large wild animals (moose, deer, bear); they were boiled, scalded and disfigured from falling into hot water pools or boiling mud; they died from falls, like this poor woman; and there were plenty of drownings when boats capsized in sudden mountain squalls. Hikers often got lost and died from exposure. People do silly things and I've done a few myself. That's life.
Was the marriage solid? I can see guys doing this, but a 52 year old woman?
Retaining walls are placed for a reason.......