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Ed Yeates Reporting Two brothers on vacation to a Utah tourist hot spot think they got a souvenir no one wants to get or keep.
Investigators are now trying to figure out if the infamous Norwalk virus hit visitors at Zion National Park.
Park Service investigators don't know for sure. But a number of people, including a group of tourists and employees, got sick about the same time.
Utah's national parks are just what the Mooring family wanted to see. In fact, 80-year-old John Mooring Sr. had saved for a year and a half just so he could take his children and their families on this special trip.
John Mooring: "My father got deathly ill. My sister, we found her on the floor almost passed out in the bathroom. She was so sick and vomiting."
Donald and John Mooring from Los Angeles, along with the rest of their family, got hit with gastro-intestinal ailments shortly after leaving Zion Park and the lodge there, where they stayed. Three of the six member family were seriously ill. Again, Donald and John's sister.
Donald Mooring: "She could not stand up. She was cramping so badly all over-- her lower body. It was really a terrible thing."
The Moorings were not the only victims. Sixteen park employees had similar symptoms over a period of about two weeks.
Zion Park investigators are awaiting lab results to see if it really is Norwalk. But just in case, the management company of the lodge implemented what is called the Nora Virus Action Plan.
Jeff D'arpa, Xenterra Parks and Resorts: "We're assuming that we have this under control. We have had one recent employee fall ill. He had symptoms of gastro-intestinal illness. His symptoms were short."
Though it appears the crisis has passed, customer and employee areas at the lodge are still being cleaned and wiped with chlorine based cleaners. Any sick employees will be quarantined in their rooms until 72 hours after symptoms end.
While Zion can't document large numbers of people who got sick, the Mooring family claims they talked to others with similar symptoms at Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell, who had come from Zion.
In fact, when one family member tried to buy an over the counter remedy..
John Mooring: "She had to go to three different stores because they were out of imodium. It seems we were running into other people at Lake Powell who were coming out of Zion, and they were sick."
If it was Norwalk virus, one family member or an employee could have passed it to another, and another, rapidly. But then again, it might turn out to be something else, from a garden variety of viruses that can also trigger gastro-intestinal ills.
