Child injured in the Great Smoky Mountains national park airlifted to UT

A small child from Coweta county Georgia was injured in the Great Smoky Mountains national park early this evening with injures serious enough to require that the child be transferred from a Gatlinburg Tennessee ambulance in the Sugarlands Visitor Center to a UT Lifestar helicopter for air transport to the hospital.

An unconfirmed source told us that the injuries occurred in or around a camp fire causing the child to be burned in the Elkmont Campgrounds.

Fortunately from what we saw the child was breathing on its own seemed quite calm when being transferred from the Ambulance to the waiting helicopter.

Accident with injuries at Oconaluftee Farm Museum in Great Smoky Mountains National Park

A ride in the field at the Oconaluftee Outdoor Farm Museum by the Oconaluftee Visitor's center at the Cherokee entrance of the Great Smoky Mountains national park went horribly wrong when the driver somehow ended up in a drainage canal.

An occupant on the back seat of the car had injuries serious enough to require being airlifted by helicopter to a nearby hospital while another occupant of the car was taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Luckily no other cars or bystanders were injured in this completely avoidable accident and traffic flowed smoothly on Newfound Gap road even though there were almost a dozen park, rescue and police vehicles and flat bed tow trucks at the scene which gave officers a change to use brand new forensic Nikon equipment to investigate and document the accident.

The driving of cars or any other motor vehicles off of designated roads and in fields is prohibited in the Great Smoky Mountains national park and presumably the driver of the vehicle has been issued a citation for at least this offense.