Posted on 09/12/2017 9:20:16 AM PDT by BenLurkin
An Italian couple and their 11-year-old son died in a freak accident on Tuesday when they fell into a 10ft-deep hole that suddenly opened up in a highly active volcanic area near Naples.
Police said the child strayed beyond safety barriers and was swallowed up by the pit, plunging into boiling hot mud at the Solfatara Crater in Pozzuoli, part of a huge volcanic area known as the Campi Flegrei or Phlegrean Fields.
His father, 45, reportedly rushed to his rescue but also fell into the sink-hole. The boy’s mother, 42, then went to their aid, but she too was swallowed by the pit. All three died, overcome by the mud and sulphurous gases.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
This makes me rethink my hike up Mt. Etna ten years ago...
horrible. Prays for the 7 yr old who was not dragged in.
An Italian couple and their 11-year-old son died in a freak accident on Tuesday when....the child strayed beyond safety barriers.
Not so much a freak accident. Totally foreseeable incident.
Sorry for them though.
I personally witnessed a teenaged girl (17-19) at the Yellowstone Geyser Basin area leave the boardwalk, walked across the crust to take a closeup photo of one of the geyser pools with her i-phone. Her parents were with her. I told her parents how dangerous and illegal it was and they just shrugged, claiming she would be ok. Head shaking moment. You can't fix stupid.
Strayed. Like he unknowingly wandered past the barriers. No, reporter, he purposefully disobeyed the signs and climbed over/under the SAFETY barriers because he was so smart and didn’t like anyone telling him no.
When I was in the USN, going through the Strait of Messina one night, it was overcast, and I could see the red glow of Mt. Etna reflecting red from the clouds as we transited...it was very cool...and weird.
I think we also had a guy jump overboard that night. Rumor had it he was trying to desert by swimming ashore. Never found him.
I feel bad for them, but...an 11 year old should know better unless he was handicapped.
That is old enough to know better.
Wow! Strange story.
I walked up Etna with my husband and a friend. The friend didn’t believe that all that sooty stuff on the snow was...ashes and hardened lava. Some people just don’t understand danger.
Watt Cressey, a park employee who was headed to a late night “hot potting” party—a soak in a warm thermal—with other park employees in 1975, but accidentally jumped into a pool that was 179 degrees.
The most unfortunate of all of Yellowstone’s hot spring deaths, however, may be the case of David Kirwan, a 24-year-old from California. On July 20, 1981, his friend’s dog, Moosie, jumped into the Celestine Pool, a 202-degree spring. Kirwan, seeing the dog suffer, prepared to dive in. “Don’t go in there!” a bystander yelled. “Like hell I won’t!” Kirwan replied and dove head first into the water. He died the next morning of his burns.
Italians don’t necessarily do this stuff. I walked up the Tower of Pisa on a very rainy day. It’s made of marble and was dangerously wet and yet kiddies were running past me. No signs, no barriers, no nothing.
It's kind of a weird place, with all the people and traffic, cheek-by-jowl with wild animals and huge expanses of wilderness...So many visitors come with little idea at all of the vastness, the danger, while park employees can grow clubbish, insular, and sometimes wander into peril themselves.
I avoid it just because I don't like rules and government officials enforcing the rules. A person can hike and climb in the nearby national forests forever, and for free.
But for those who like it---party on!
Well there we go
Blame the victim x 3
You must be happy to know it was an excruciating way to die
If you can’t set a good example you can be a horrible lesson.
A group of us (sailors) went to the very top of Mt. Etna in the early seventies. The family and I were there also maybe 15-16 years ago but we could only get about half way up because of damage from eruptions. We walked the rims of several side craters...kinda of scary.
That area is like a lunar landscape...incredible though.
What’s also weird is that halfway up there is a coffee shop selling food and chochkes. A nun, wearing the old-fashioned habit was there, with a group of school kids!
You might like volcano national park on the big island Hawaii
They have safety barriers in Yellowstone, and marked paths at Kilauea. A remarkable coincidence ...
“Didn’t that happen to a young man at Yellowstone a few years ago?”
Yes it did. He was travelling with his sister and she warned him to stay on the wooden sidewalk. Nothing of him was left to recover. He literally dissolved.
So when 2 parents die trying to save their 11 year old son, as their 7 year old watches, which were they?
Good examples or horrible lessons?
Would the right thing have been to stand by and listen to their child scream as he burned and suffocated?
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