Probably shouldn’t have been standing there in the first place.
Good thing Mother Nature has its own way of enforcing the rules. These tourists in the Shaanxi Province of China quickly found out that they needed to step away from the frozen Heishancha Waterfall. Did a sign or a park ranger tell them to move back? Probably, but they didn’t listen. So how did they know to distance themselves from the potentially hazardous frozen water?
Nature told them in a loud and clear fashion.
As you’ll see in the video below, a large group of people had gathered beneath the picturesque waterfall that had become frozen in place. Waterfalls can only freeze over when the water source that’s feeding it freezes first. That’s evidently what happened here in China, and tourists flocked to see it with their very own eyes – and pose in front of it, of course.
Just as you should never turn your back to a wild animal, it’s probably in your best interest to always face the frozen waterfall that could break apart and rocket sizable icicles down to the ground at any second. Sure enough, this picturesque, natural ice sculpture gave way and came tumbling down towards the unsuspecting tourists.
If they had obeyed the guidelines to stay away, they could have calmly watched this unfold from a safe distance. Instead, the tourists (guess you could call them “tourons” since they made the Tourons of National Parks page) ran for their lives and screamed to the heavens. Many of them got their legs knocked out from underneath them, but that was fortunately the worst of it.
As the caption to the post revealed, there was reportedly only one woman that suffered injuries:
“This massive icicle fell dozens of meters, sending tourists into chaos in Shaanxi Province, China. Only one injury was reported. A woman slipped while trying to escape. Reports say the tourists were taking pictures under the Heishancha Waterfall when a ton of snow suddenly fell from a height. The tourists reportedly ignored safety guidelines to get close-up photos of the waterfall.”
Yeah… I won’t ever be getting that close to a waterfall. I wasn’t ever planning on it to begin with, but now that I’ve seen the damage that a big ol’ icicle can do, you certainly won’t find me posing for a picture in front of an icy waterfall death trap.
No matter how beautiful it is.
I know what you are thinking… I’m not extending much sympathy to these people that likely had their lives flash before their eyes. Guess what? The internet isn’t giving them a break either, as the comment section below the post was riddled with commentary like this:
“Natural selection at work.”
“Of course they ignored safety guidelines. Sorry not sorry, but I have zero sympathy for people finding out after they f**k around anymore.”
“It’s the people who put their CHILDREN in harms way that I have the hardest time dealing with.”
“In a supposedly warming world, you won’t catch me near a huge f**king icicle.”
“Zoom lens. Problem solved.”
Exactly…
