Accidental Fatalities in National Parks
Personally, I find there is enough to do in national forests and don’t often visit national parks. However, the May 2012 issue of National Geographic had an article that caught my attention. According to that article, the cause of fatalities in national parks between 2007 and 2011 broke down into the following percentages: 37% to drowning, 23% to motor vehicle accidents, 18% to falls, 4% exposure, 3% Plan crash, 2% avalanche, 0.9% poisoning, and 06% to animal attack (the reminding 11.5% were humped into an “other causes” category).
Since national parks, in my observations, tend to be a more controlled and supervised environment than national forests, I have to wonder how would the later stack up against the former. Considering the free flowing, as there are no or very few controlled entrance portal, nature of national forests, I wonder if the numbers might not be greater. But, since in my experiences, national forest users tend to be more knowledgeable about the outdoors, so maybe those numbers wouldn’t be higher.
The bottomline is there are dangers whether you are in a national forest or park. As Ken Phillips says in the National Geographic article, “. . .Plan ahead, set realistic goals, heed warnings, pay attention — and enjoy the view.”
This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 3:54 am and is filed under camping, Forest Service, National Forest, national forests, national grasslands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
