An Arizona resident has died from the plague as officials were probing whether a prairie dog die-off in the area was also tied to the lethal illness.

A bubonic plague death has been confirmed in the US for the first time in eight years. The victim, of Coconino County, showed up at the Flagstaff Medical Center and died on the same day, said Northern Arizona Healthcare. Despite ‘attempts to provide life-saving resuscitation’, the patient did not recover.

A person who tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacteria that causes the bubonic plague, died in a Northern Arizona emergency room.

The death is the first recorded case of fatal pneumonic plague in the county since 2007, when a resident became infected after contact with a dead animal.

A physical therapist died after a flash fire broke out inside an oxygen therapy machine at his Arizona medical facility on Wednesday, officials said, marking at least the second such fatality in the U.