NATIONAL PARK SERVICE

MORNING REPORT

Friday, August 7, 2015

INCIDENTS

White Sands NM

Two French Visitors Die, Child Rescued

Two visitors from France died Tuesday afternoon while hiking the Alkali Flat Trail in White Sands National Monument. A minor child in the group was found alive, rescued by monument and local emergency personnel, and treated for heat exposure.

Park rangers discovered the three French nationals while on routine trail patrol approximately 1.5 miles from the Alkali Flat trailhead. The body of the woman was found about 5:30 p.m. and the man's body and surviving boy about half an hour later. The daytime high temperature in the monument Tuesday reached 101 degrees F.

The deaths are being investigated by the Otero County (NM) Sheriff's Office. French authorities were immediately notified and are assisting in the case.

[Becky Wiles Burghart, Chief of Interpretation]

OTHER NEWS

The following stories are among those in today's webpage editions of InsideNPS (available to NPS employees only) and the Morning Report (available to all readers):

Office of Communications - Secretary Jewell and Director Jarvis announced the designation of four new national historic landmarks this week. The designation recognizes the sites as places that possess exceptional value and quality in illustrating or interpreting the heritage of the United States.

NPS Career Academy for Visitor and Resource Protection - Over the three-day period from June 24th to June 26th, the directors of the seven approved Seasonal Law Enforcement Training Programs held their annual meeting at the National Conservation Training Center.

Conservation and Outdoor Recreation Division - The Service's Federal Lands to Parks program is helping the East Bay Regional Park District transform 2,500 of the 5,000 acre Concord Naval Weapons Station into the Concord Hills Regional Park.

National Interagency Fire Center - NIFC is at PL 4. Fifty uncontained large fires are burning nationwide. Twenty incident management teams and almost 20,000 firefighters are currently in the field.

Midwest Region - Midwest Region has established an Office of American Indian Affairs and has selected Reed Robinson, currently deputy superintendent of Badlands National Park, as its first program manager.

Fire and Aviation Management - Glenn Kessler has been named as the recipient of the 2015 Wright Brothers National Aviation Safety Award. In his position as park aviation manager, Glenn has shown exceptional leadership in establishing and managing Mount Rainier's new aviation program.

Servicewide Training Calendar - The following have been added to this week's calendar - three upcoming NPS digital Servicewide calls/webinars and two NPS.gov office hour sessions.

To see the full text of these stories, readers should go to one or the other of the following sites:

NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index

Non-NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/" http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/

The Morning Report is produced by the Office of Communications with the support of the Office of the Associate Director for Information Resources. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov).

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