State Fines Ski Resort in Patrollers’ Deaths

The deaths of three ski patrol members at Mammoth Mountain earlier this year might have been prevented had resort officials properly trained employees, posted more warning signs and written procedures for how to deal with toxic volcanic vents, state regulators said Friday.

Cal/OSHA, the state’s workplace safety enforcer, levied nearly $50,000 in fines and issued a toughly worded report citing the ski resort for failing to gauge the danger presented by a vent in the ground spewing poisonous fumes.

“If standard practices had been followed, this catastrophic event might not have occurred,” said Len Welsh, Cal/OSHA’s acting chief.

The accident occurred April 6 when two employees fell into a 20-foot crevasse over a snow-covered volcanic vent, known as a fumarole, while on patrol. Both died.

In the ensuing rescue attempt, a third ski patrol member died and seven more were seriously injured after being overcome by fumes from the vent.

The accident shook the tight-knit mountain community, 300 miles north of Los Angeles and a popular destination for skiers from Southern California.

It capped a deadly year in Mammoth, with eight fatalities in various accidents at the resort, including an avalanche.

Cal/OSHA’s report found that though some patrollers went into the area with oxygen masks, the safety devices could not protect them against the fumes. Dean Fryer, a Cal/OSHA spokesman, said Mammoth Mountain had no clear written plan on what to do in such a situation.

Officials at the resort strongly disputed the state’s finding, saying the rescuers were trained to wait until firefighters arrived.

But resort Chief Executive Rusty Gregory said that, intent on saving their colleagues and friends, ski patrol members acted “heroically” and went after them despite the rules.

“Heroes sometimes do that,” he said. “This has truly broken our hearts forever. This was a huge personal loss for us.”

The masks the patrollers wore, Gregory said, were designed to stabilize people injured on the mountain, not for protection against lethal gases.

“The bottom line is that our procedures for carbon dioxide occurrences or any noxious gases is that you don’t enter a space where those gases exist,” he added. “We lost two patrollers who fell in, and a third ... who heroically jumped in to try to save them. He did what great friends do, which is to take care of other people.”

Mammoth Mountain is dotted with fumaroles, which release occasional puffs of foul-smelling gases.

During most of the year, the vents are harmless because the carbon dioxide fumes they emit dissipate in the air. But in winter, the volcanic gases pool and concentrate in pockets beneath the snow.

On the day of the accident, the fumarole had been covered with a layer of heavy snow, as much as 21 feet. That created a dome over the large crevasse, with poison gases trapped inside.

Some patrollers were trying to dig out a buried fence around the area when the snow around the vent collapsed. James Juarez and John “Scott” McAndrews fell about 20 feet to the bottom of the chute, where gases had accumulated.

Charles Walter Rosenthal, a patrol member and researcher for UC Santa Barbara, went in after them with several other patrollers. Rosenthal died.

“This still rips their guts out,” said Gregory, who had known some of the patrollers for 30 years. “It’s very difficult for them.”

One of them, Bren Townsend, said Friday that he could not discuss the tragedy.

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about this,” he said. “It’s very personal.”

In Mammoth Lakes, some expressed support for the resort Friday and said Cal/OSHA’s findings seem off base.

“I think the community sentiment is that it was a tragic accident,” said Dan Dawson, director of the Sierra Nevada Aquatic Laboratory in Mammoth Lakes, where Rosenthal worked. “I know some of the members of the ski patrol, and I think they were well-trained. This was a pretty freak thing.”

Tony Barrett, a Mammoth Lakes planning commissioner and former councilman, agreed and said the community is trying to move on.

“The state’s wrong on this,” he said, adding that the ski resort “has been here for over 50 years and they have one of the best ski patrols ... in the nation. This was simply an absolute tragedy. It was nothing you could ever really plan for.”

After the accident, state officials said they had alerted resort officials in 1995 of the potential danger posed by fumaroles.

Regulators said they understood the sensitivity of the matter, but maintained that the resort could have done more to prevent the deaths.

“We acknowledge the emotion involved, but these people are trained in medical response,” Fryer said, “and if there’s clear training in place, they should know what to do and what not to do.”

hector.becerra@latimes.com