WEST YELLOWSTONE — A dangerous explosion in Yellowstone National Park led to a video exploding on the internet on Tuesday. So I spoke to the woman who took that video and her husband about how their vacation took an unexpected turn.
“We didn't realize the gravity of the situation in the first few moments. And then when the rocks started raining all around us from the sky? Ok, this is bad—we’ve got to get out of here,” says Steve March.
WATCH THE MOMENT THE EXPLOSION HAPPENED:
Vlada and Steve March are from Palm Desert, California. They told me they’ve both always dreamed of visiting Yellowstone National Park. Vlada and Steve booked a six-day trip with Vlada’s mother and their two kids, six-year-old Ethan and nine-year-old Maxwell.
On Tuesday, they booked an all-day guided tour for their first day in Yellowstone. One of their first stops? Biscuit Basin.
I asked Vlada and Steve, “Moments before, did you have any suspicions that anything was about to happen?”
“Absolutely not," says Vlada.
"Our tour guide, he’s very experienced and he knows how things are supposed to look. We were heading towards Jewel Geyser on the boardwalk and he turned around and said, ‘Huh, this is weird. This is not how that's supposed to look,’” Steve adds.
That’s when Vlada got out her phone and started recording, hoping she would see something interesting. But what happened next, no one could have expected.
“Moments later, the whole thing just blew up. There was massive amounts of water, rock, and ash that just shot up into the air, hundreds of feet,” says Steve.
Park officials say it was a hydrothermal explosion. Vlada and Steve told me as the ash covered the sun and sky, their survival instincts kicked in, as you can hear in the viral video when Vlada tells her two young sons to run.
WATCH MORE: Aftermath of Biscuit Basin explosion seen in NPS photos
Shortly after the explosion, Vlada and Steve’s tour guide Issac safely directed the visitors down the now-damaged boardwalk, back to the parking lot.
“Even when it cleared and we could see the path back, we weren't sure if anything else was going to explode. There was a little bench there where my mom sat before that. Half of it was gone. It was really scary,” says Vlada.
Luckily, Vlada, Steve, and their family safely left the park, and there are no reported injuries from the explosion. And when I asked them if they're planning on going forward with their Yellowstone trip?
“Absolutely. We’re here, we’ll go back and see more of the park. I mean, we only got a little taste yesterday. You gotta live your life. You never know what's going to happen anywhere in the world. So it really makes you see things differently," says Vlada.
