Hot Spring May Have Claimed Another Victim

K E L S E Y V I L LE, Calif. Sept. 25, 2000 -- 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.

Without proper air flow, dangerous levels of carbon dioxidehover over the surface, said Cathy Janik, a U.S. Geological Surveygeochemist. “I’ll tell you, I wouldn’t want to sit in the spring,just because there’s so much gas,” she said.

Walls Torn Down, Put Up Again

Stephen Kastner’s father, Bill Kastner, said all mysteriousdeaths at Soda Springs should have been taken seriously.

“We’ve been going there with the boys since they were 8 or10,” said Kastner, who has a summer house nearby. “Back thenthere was no wall. In the past few years, someone built the wall,then the BLM knocked it down and then someone built it back upagain and BLM knocked it down again.”

Officially, the cause of Kastner’s death has not been determinedand lab results are expected to take several weeks, according toRussell Perdock, Lake County’s coroner. Preliminary autopsy resultsshowed that Kastner drowned, he said.

But Damon said he believes the young man was asphyxiated, andKastner’s father said drowning as the cause of death is “basicallyimpossible as far as I’m concerned, unless someone was holding hishead down.” He said Stephen was an accomplished water skier,swimmer and diver.

After his son’s death, Kastner hired a chemist who said thecarbon dioxide level was so high, his meter could not register it.

At first, the BLM was ready to fill the basin with boulders tomake it unusable, but two dozen locals appealed for a compromise ata public meeting earlier this month.

Bathers Remain Devoted

The waters of Soda Springs have long been prized for theirsupposed medicinal qualities. Locals have bathed in the waters forgenerations. Pomo Indians gathered at the spot, teenagers metthere for romance, and families soaked together in the steamingmineral water.

The waters attract legions of visitors, especially during thesummer. Residents talk of boats idling 30 at a time, theirpassengers waiting for a chance to take a dip.

“The bubbles are great,” said Thelma Dangel, 75, who has livedon the shore nearby for 27 years. The fact that her husband oncerevived a man he found choking in the basin never deterred Dangel.

“I took my mother out there when she was in her 80s,” sherecalled. “You just sit there and have a lot of good chats andfun.”

“As a kid, this was adventure, this was discovery,” said RolfKriken, 55, who spent youthful summers at Clear Lake and moved backnine years ago to raise his two sons. “It’s a very spiritual,healing place.”