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Hot Spring May Have Claimed Another Victim
K E L S E Y V I L LE, Calif. Sept. 25 -- As many as a dozen people luxuriating in the bubbling warm waters of Northern California’s Soda Springs may have been asphyxiated over the years by the carbon dioxide that rises out of the Earth.
The pool is encircled by a natural rock border, but a few yearsago someone built up the wall with bricks and concrete, making itabout 2 feet higher. The higher wall made the basin cozier, but italso apparently trapped the poisonous gases close to the surface ofthe water.
The most recent victim of the poisonous gas was 31-year-oldStephen Kastner of Napa, who died alone in the pool July 28, saidPhil Damon, an assistant field manager with the federal Bureau ofLand Management, which owns the land.
Record of Deaths Uncertain
“From our documentation, and it’s minimal, we know for surethere have been three deaths and probably there have been fourtimes that many,” Damon said last week. “I don’t have much doubtabout that.”
The earliest documented death by asphyxiation at the springs wasJohn “Pop” O’Shea, a former Lake County coroner who died in 1878,Damon said. Another man, who was not identified, died in 1981.
Soda Springs sits at the edge of a small island about 200 feetoff the shore of Clear Lake, about 120 miles north of SanFrancisco. The water in the rectangular 6-by-8-foot pool smellsvaguely of rotten eggs and the basin’s natural back walls areencrusted with a multicolored patina of chemicals.
Carbon dioxide comes up through inactive volcanic vents, makingthe water bubble like a hot tub, or a bottle of soda.
Damon said locals had erected the wall to cloister the springsfrom the lake’s waters, which tended to lap in and cool the90-degree pool.
The BLM tore down the wall last week, and the springs are nowoff limits. Warning signs sit in the effervescent waters, strungtogether by a chain.
The plan now is to reopen the springs when the BLM determinescarbon dioxide levels are safe, then install a wall that can beadjusted to the changing lake levels to allow for amplecirculation, Damon said.
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