YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, Calif. — For a decade, the National Park Service has known that the 3,000-foot granite cliff hanging over a tourist village at Yosemite is susceptible to colossal rockslides such as one last month that crushed cabins and sent schoolchildren running for their lives.
An Associated Press examination of records found that rock falls in and around 600-cabin Curry Village have been happening more frequently in the past several years, with two people killed and about two dozen injured since 1996.
The Park Service has repeatedly rebuilt and repaired the lodgings rather than bar the public or post warnings.
“To me, that’s irresponsible,” said Deanna Maschmeyer of Monterey, Calif., who ran with her two children from their cabin as the equivalent of 570 dump trucks of rock shook the ground Oct. 8.
“Now that I’ve lived through it, I can’t believe it’s safe, she said. “I will not stay there again.”
Falling rocks at one of America’s most popular parks have led to at least one lawsuit and scientific debate over whether the danger is attributable to construction in the park.
In the wake of last month’s near-catastrophe a park advisory committee could decide as early as this week whether to shut down permanently as much as half of Curry Village, which has been around for more than a century.
Park officials say that over the years, they have weighed the safety of visitors against public demand for lodging amid one of the world’s most spectacular natural wonders.
“It’s not inaction on our part over the past 10 years,” said Scott Gediman, the park’s public-affairs officer. “It’s just us saying we’re going to do the scientific studies and make decisions based upon that.”
Curry Village is the most family- friendly lodging in the park, consisting of cabins, stores and restaurants run by an outside company. It is in Yosemite Valley, beneath the unstable granite of Glacier Point.
The village has experienced more rockfalls during the past decade than any other place in the 1-by-7-mile valley. U.S. Geological Survey and park records list as many as 46 rockfalls since 1996 — four times the number during the previous 139 years.
Since 1999, 20 of the structures at Curry Village have been directly hit by boulders, and many more have been damaged by flying rocks. Since 1857, at least 535 rockfalls have occurred in Yosemite Valley, and they have killed 14 people and injured 62, more than at any other national park. Yosemite Valley is easily the most collapse-prone place in a park that receives more than 3 million visitors a year.
