Yellowstone Concession Employee Sentenced for Fire

A seasonal concessionaire employee in Yellowstone has admitted to starting a fire at the North Entrance of the Park two weeks ago.

Curtis Faustich appeared Tuesday at the Yellowstone Justice Center in Mammoth Hot Springs, where he pleaded guilty to discarding a lighted material in a hazardous manner. Faustich admitted to dropping a lit cigarette on the ground while sitting at a picnic table and igniting the fire, which burned four acres between the North Entrance station and the Gardner River on Friday, July 26th.

Faustich was sentenced to three months in jail, $5,000 in restitution, two years of unsupervised probation, and was prohibited from entering Yellowstone for two years.

Faustich was identified after individuals called the park’s 24-hour tip line and provided timely incident details.

The fire is one of five so far this season in Yellowstone, and the only human-caused fire to this point.