Less than two weeks after announcing that a child who camped at Yosemite’s Crane Flat Campground had the plague, the park said this week Tuolumne Meadows Campground was closing because of the same disease.
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The boys were sleeping in a tent when a limb fell from a black oak tree about 5 a.m. Friday in the Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite Valley, parks spokesman Scott Gediman has said.
In 2012, a Yosemite concession employee also died when his tent cabin was hit by a falling limb.
Hefty sized limbs falling in the park is a usual incidence at Yosemite that occasionally leads to many death. “Campers had their reservations canceled at the 304-site campground so the insecticide can be sprayed into rodent burrow holes”.
Late last week, authorities discovered that two squirrels living in Tuolumne Meadows had died of the plague, suggesting an outbreak in wildlife.
The child stayed at Crane Flat Campground and visited Rainbow Pool in the Stanislaus National Forest about 11 miles west of Yosemite National Park, according to a notice on the park’s website.
Spread by fleas and carried by rodents, person-to-person transmission of the disease is rare, the AP said.
The patient, a Georgia resident, had been vacationing in Yosemite National Park, the Sierra National Forest, and surrounding areas in early August, according to the California Department of Public Health. The child, who is from Southern California, and has not been named, is recovering.
Although they found plague at the campgrounds, Kramer said “the risk of exposure to people is very low”.
In California, health officials say plague-infected animals are most likely to be found in the foothills and mountains and to a lesser extent, along the coast. In California, there have been 42 human cases of plague since 1970, including nine fatalities.
Officials advise anyone to seek help if they experience plague symptoms, which include fever, chills, weakness, nausea, and swollen glands in the neck, armpit or groin.
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Still, the report suggests that two people recently in California have a disease best known for killing millions centuries ago that – despite all the advances of modern science – remains a real present-day problem.
