Oregon Rafting Accident
bad...@hotmail.com
Just Heard that there was a rafting trajedy on the Illinois River.
Supposedly 2 rafters were killed and up to 30 stranded. Evidently the
river flashed from 3000 cfs to 20,000 cfs due to rain and snowmelt.
thats all the info i have for now.
br.
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JDD RIO
>Supposedly 2 rafters were killed and up to 30 stranded. Evidently the
>river flashed from 3000 cfs to 20,000 cfs due to rain and snowmelt.
>thats all the info i have for now.
Looks like a nightmare. Check our the chart at :
http://kayak.physics.orst.edu/~tpw/kayaking/display.cgi/Illinois.Oregon.Il
linois.Kerby/flow
JDD...@aol.com (Dan Dunlap)
Gary Pagac
JDD RIO wrote:
> Looks like a nightmare. Check our the chart at :
>
> http://kayak.physics.orst.edu/~tpw/kayaking/display.cgi/Illinois.Oregon.Il
> linois.Kerby/flow
> JDD...@aol.com (Dan Dunlap)
I heard the flow was at 20000 CFS. I just tried going to the above link,
and Netscape reported it couldn't load it. Any ideas?
My sister lives in the Illinois valley just two miles from the river. I kinda
introduced her to kayaking and she's been talking about getting good enuf for
the Illinois! It is in extreme southwest Oregon, BTW.
JDD RIO
> I heard the flow was at 20000 CFS. I just tried going to the above link,
>and Netscape reported it couldn't load it. Any ideas?
You might try this link and then scroll down to Oregon levels and then to the
Illinois
http://www.physics.orst.edu/~tpw/kayaking/levels.html
JDD...@aol.com (Dan Dunlap)
KSTRELETZK
Morning news reports 10 survivors. 2 fatalies. Rescue/retrieval in progress.
- Mothra (aka Kathy Streletzky)
"Perhaps it was that, then -
The fear, and dealing with that fear" - Corran Addison
whit...@halcyon.com
In article <199803241146...@ladder03.news.aol.com>,
The rafting party that had the accident camped or was stranded above
the Green Wall on Sat. night.
Rick in N. Idaho
Pulled this off KOIN TV's Website in Portland, Oregon.
Thirteen Rescued On Illinois River
Up To 10 Possibly Still Missing
AGNESS, Ore., Updated 6:05 p.m. March 23, 1998 -- Coast Guard helicopters
plucked thirteen people from the rocks in the swelling Illinois River,
which was turned into a death trap by days of heavy rain and melting snow.
According to The Associated Press, the search helicopters went into a
narrow, 1800-foot gorge on a rescue mission, after a surge of whitewater
killed two river rafters and left up to 10 more missing in southwestern
Oregon.
The thirteen people airlifted from the rocks appear to be in good condition
with only mild cases of hypothermia, according to AP.
"They weren't beat up or bruised or anything like that - they're just
cold," Millie Bird told the wire service. Bird is an administrator at Curry
General Hospital in Gold Beach, where three of the survivors were treated.
The only other traces of Sunday's accident were two empty, overturned rafts
seen floating down river, the wire service reports.
"When that water comes through that chute, there's nothing you can do -
there's nowhere you can go to escape," Curry County Sheriff's Lt. Mark
Metcalf told AP.
KOIN 6 News reports heavy rains and melting snow turned the Illinois River
into a deadly surge of whitewater. The nightmare began near a dangerous
stretch of the river known as the Green Wall, named for the moss and fern
formation that hovers above the tricky rapids. The rising river prevented
rescue boats from launching today, and fog and rain delayed the helicopters
from reaching the rafters until this afternoon, The Associated Press
reports.
Water volume more than doubled in a day and a half, and deputies say it
could be 10 times higher when the water crests later today, the wire
service says.
The National Weather Service declared a flood watch for southern Oregon and
northern California, the AP reports.
One of the rescued rafters emerging from a Coast Guard helicopter>Due in
part to the steep gorge the river flows through, water rises quickly during
a rainstorm - and falls just as fast, once the rainfall tapers off. The
river, manageable only for experienced rafters during normal conditions,
can quickly become a raging torrent, according to AP. Under normal
conditions, the Illinois River is considered a Class 5-difficulty river for
rafting, with the top rating, a Class 6, considered to be "run at risk of
death."
Allen Wilson, a rafting guide with Wilderness Canyon Adventures who runs
tours in the area, told AP even experienced guides avoid the water in this
kind of weather.
"All you can do is get to high ground," Wilson says. "I wouldn't have tried
it."
"At moderate levels, it's beautiful, fun and wonderful, but it can all too
quickly become deadly serious," says guide Ferron Mayfield, who has run
trips on the river for 20 years. "It's world-class whitewater. It is quite
awesome and quite intimidating."
Compiled by Channel 6000 Staff
tc_mits
I used the NewsBot search engine this morning (www.newbot.com), plugged in two
words "illinois" and "raft", and got two urls. The most recent is this:
www.boston.com/dailyglobe/globehtml/083/Two_rafters_die_in_surging_Ore__Whi.htm
The story is a little confusing because it says:
"A kayaker who was on the river Sunday during the surge managed to paddle to a
landing upriver and call police. He said a river-running buddy and a whitewater
rafter were killed and several people were clinging to the bank."
I'm not clear as to whether it was two rafters that died or one rafter and one
kayaker.
sam heinrich erols.com/carboburnr
Christine Freeman
Regarding the very high levels on the Illinois:
I tried that set of links and wound up at the site that provides flow info
for the Illinois. According to that info, the flow was:
Saturday 8 a.m. 1862 cfs
Sunday 8 a.m. 4016 cfs
Sunday 12 noon 4442 cfs
Sunday 6 p.m. 13,330 cfs
Sunday afternoon must have been a nightmare, especially compared with
Saturday morning. I was in the Sierra at 6,000 ft on Saturday night, and it
was raining heavily and warmly on the snow. One of the lessons of this
tragedy: Rain on snow is Nature's fast track for raising river levels. The
river I was planning to do this weekend (N. Fork American) has risen from
1800 to 12,000. Time for another plan.
Chrissy
(to reply, remove "ohyeah" from address.)
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
From http://www.oregonlive.com
March 24, 1998: Two rafters die; 10 rescued
THE RIVER: Rain and snowmelt cause lethal surges at a notorious Oregon
rapid
By John Griffith and Jonathon Brinkman of The Oregonian staff
AGNESS - The white-water thrill of the Illinois
River turned to terror when weekend rains churned the Rogue River tributary
into a foaming caldron, killing two rafters and forcing the helicopter
rescue of 10 others Monday afternoon.
Spring snowmelt and more than 3 inches of warm rain
sent the flashy Illinois surging to nine times its flow in a day. The
killing pulse formed 12-foot waves that capsized rafts at the Green Wall, a
notorious rapid hemmed in by a basalt gorge about 18 miles upriver from the
Illinois' confluence with the Rogue.
"That river was doing things I've never seen a
river do before," said Bob Tooker, 33, of Vancouver, Wash., who was rescued
by helicopter from the rugged canyon Monday afternoon. A wave flipped
Tooker's raft at the Little Green Wall, 0.7 mile below the Class 5 Green
Wall rapid. Tooker was swept along more than a mile before he could
scramble out on a rock.
Another in Tooker's party was not as fortunate. The
Curry County Sheriff's Department identified one of the dead as Wilbur Gale
Byars, a Deschutes River guide from Aloha. Byars, who also drove a bus for
the Beaverton School District, would have turned 63 today.
By dusk Monday, four U.S. Coast Guard helicopters
had airlifted 10 survivors from the river. Lt. Mark Metcalf of the Curry
County Sheriff's Department said one body had been recovered, but another
was still in the river. Coast Guard helicopters made several flights over
the river, and authorities thought all boaters had been accounted for.
"As far as we're concerned, the operation is over,"
Metcalf said. "We're thankful. It could have been a lot worse."
Metcalf said a flyover will be made this morning to
make sure there is no one else on the river, and the search will continue
for the remaining body.
The fury of the current kept rescuers in jet boats
off the river Sunday and Monday. Fog and rain delayed air rescue efforts
Monday.
As late as early Sunday, the river gauge at Kerby
recorded the flow at 1,934 cubic feet per second, or 6.9 feet. By Monday,
the river had jumped to 21 feet and 17,605 cfs, said Chuck Glaser of the
National Weather Service station in Medford.
"When that water comes through that chute, there's
nothing you can do, there's nowhere you can go to escape," Metcalf said.
All accounted for
Earlier, authorities feared as many as 30 people
were missing - a number based on the permits issued for people to launch
their boats. But a check of the people who obtained permits determined all
had been accounted for. Some never launched because of the bad weather,
and others made it out safely on their own.
Coast Guard helicopters gingerly hovered over the
gorge, as narrow as 20 feet in spots. One helicopter lowered a Coast Guard
rescue swimmer when the crew spotted Tooker and two companions on the bank.
The three men had spent the night huddled under a
lean-to they made from sticks and ferns. They climbed into the basket and
were hoisted into the helicopter because there was no room to land in the
steep-sided canyon.
All those plucked from the rocks appeared to be in
good condition, with only mild cases of hypothermia.
"They weren't beat up or bruised or anything like
that - they're just cold," said Millie Bird, an administrator at Curry
General Hospital in Gold Beach, where three Portland-area survivors were
treated.
Mitchell McDougal, 37, of Beaverton was admitted
for hypothermia. The other survivors treated were Ricky Carver, 41, and
Kirk Wilkens, 33.
The Illinois, which runs through the remote
Kalmiopsis Wilderness in the rugged Siskiyou Mountains of southwest Oregon,
is among the West's most challenging white-water rivers. It was named for
three brothers who emigrated from Peoria, Ill., in 1847 and struck gold on
one of its tributaries, which later yielded a 17-pound gold nugget.
The Illinois is run normally between March and May
at flows below 3,000 cubic feet a second. Even at those flows, the river
boasts 150 rapids in 20 miles of waterborne roller coaster.
River for experts only
The river, which is for experts only, is navigable
by raft and kayak. Most boaters put in at Miami Bar in Josephine County and
take out at Oak Flat in Curry County, a 35-mile, two-day float through some
of Oregon's wildest country.
"At moderate levels, it's beautiful, fun and
wonderful, but it can all too quickly become deadly serious," said guide
Ferron Mayfield, who has run trips on the river for 20 years. "It's
world-class white-water. It is quite awesome and quite intimidating."
On Monday, Justin Boice and his father, Court, ran
their jet boats 12 miles up the Illinois in a futile effort to reach
stranded boaters. The two boats were forced to turn back at Silver Creek.
"The water was just too high," Boice said. "We
couldn't make it any farther without endangering ourselves as much as the
people we were trying to rescue. It was some of the more intense boating I
have ever done."
Dave Brooks, 45, of Gold Beach made it past the
Green Wall, the most treacherous rapid on the river, before the Illinois
surged. Brooks and his party of three boats and five people broke camp
early Sunday and made it off the river by 10 a.m.
"It was high, but it was safely negotiable," said
Brooks, who has floated the Illinois 15 times. "What gets people in trouble
in situations like this is bad decisions." Gary Moore and Guy Colby of Gold
Beach manned the oars in the other two boats in Brooks' party.
Rafters taken to a base camp in Agness included Ken
Bavoso and Dori Brownell from the Portland area. Two other rafters, Roger
Stewart and Matthew Smith from the Portland area, made it out on their own
Sunday afternoon.
Other rafters who were rescued and brought to Gold
Beach Airport were Gary Hough; his son, Daniel; Katherine Meyers; and Mike
Kalk, all of the Corvallis area.
Drop predicted today
The National Weather Service predicted the river
would drop by today.
Before launching, groups are required to register
and place their permits in a lock box in front of the Selma Market.
Clerks at the store said a group lingered for
several hours Sunday trying to decide whether it was safe to go. "I said,
`No way I'd go down that river,' " said clerk Cameron Anderson.
He said that just before the group set out, the
U.S. Forest Service called and told the store to post information about the
dangerous conditions.
"I ran out to the parking lot and just missed
them," Anderson said.
The Associated Press and Brian Meehan, Rob Eure,
Romel Hernandez and Joan Laatz Jewett of The Oregonian staff contributed to
this report.
JDD RIO
Very sad story. Someone obviously made some bad decisions. I sort of get the
feeling they risked getting back on the river on Sunday in order to get back to
work, etc. I don't know if that was a factor and the story will get told.
Certainly no job worth riskling your life to get into a river in flood, if that
was the case.
AOL has a narrated "slide show" with photos of the overturned boats, aerial
photos of the river and the Green Wall in flood and of rescues. There is some
comments by Gary Hough, a boater listed as "rescued" in the article. Go to
news and look for the ABC slideshow in the rafting tragedy.
JDD...@aol.com (Dan Dunlap)
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
Second body recovered from raging river; rescue effort ends
By LAUREN DODGE
The Associated Press
03/24/98 6:09 PM Eastern
AGNESS. Ore. (AP) -- With its blades whirring just feet
from the walls of atowering gorge, a helicopter lowered itself one last
time Tuesday to pull out the body of the second rafter killed by a surge of
whitewater.
Survivors of Sunday's disaster on the Illinois River had
tied the body of 27-year-old Jeff Alexander to a tree so it wouldn't be
washed away. The body withstood the raging torrent for two days, and for a
time was submerged before the water lowered enough for it to be hoisted
out.
The recovery ended the search and rescue effort with all
accounted for: two rafters dead and 10 survivors saved without injury, some
of whom were forced to cling for life to the mossy, 1,800-foot canyon walls
overnight.
They were caught in the kind of flash flood that makes the
river through the southwestern Oregon mountains notorious. In a day and a
half, heavy rain and snowmelt swelled the river to twice its normal volume,
a force of foaming brown water that was only intensified when pushed
through canyons as narrow as 20 feet.
Coast Guard rescue teams Tuesday were thankful the death
toll wasn't worse.
For one thing, authorities initially thought as many as 30
people could be missing -- all were later accounted for.
And for another, rescuers had never practiced lowering
their helicopters into such a tight space, battling rain, fog and high
winds along the way.
Rescue swimmer Richard Hall was lowered into the gorge to
hoist out two people who tried to escape the river by climbing 300 feet up
on the side of the slippery cliff.
Strapped to a tether, Hall crept along the side of the
cliff, walking his way toward the stranded rafters while the blades whirled
over him, just feet from the rocks.
"I didn't want to look up," he said.
Although the noise from the helicopter prevented rescuers
from speaking to the cold and wet rafters, Hall said they were clearly
happy to be found.
"When he put his arms around my legs, he held on tight,"
Hall said. "They were happy to get out of there."
But not all the rescues were so dramatic.
Mike Kalk, 17, of Corvallis, said he and three other
rafters went down the river all day Saturday, but the river rose 12 feet
overnight and they decided not to put their raft back in Sunday.
Their plan was to camp out until the river calmed down.
They were on a grassy plateau 40 feet above the river when the rescue
choppers came in Monday and lifted them out.
"Basically, it was a camping trip for us," Kalk said.
Dave Brooks, on the last raft to make it through safely,
camped just below the Green Wall, the most fearsome rapid on the 35-mile
Illinois River float. He described areas on the river where normally
3-foot-high waves were swirling with 15-foot high whitewater.
"We dodged a bullet," he said. "I've never seen that river
with that amount ofwater that fast."
RivierRatt
Gary Pagac <gpa...@gntech.net> writ:
>JDD RIO wrote:
>
>> Looks like a nightmare. Check our the chart at :
>>
>> http://kayak.physics.orst.edu/~tpw/kayaking/display.cgi/Illinois.Oregon.Il
>> linois.Kerby/flow
>> JDD...@aol.com (Dan Dunlap)
>
> I heard the flow was at 20000 CFS. I just tried going to the above link,
>and Netscape reported it couldn't load it. Any ideas?
>
The link didn't work for me because of the line break. When I connected "Il"
with "linois" (and all that follows), deleting the break and space, the link
worked jest fine. Hope that helps.
Riviera Ratt
Gary Pagac
RivierRatt wrote:
Got it -- thanks.
Roger Lynn
According to the Denver Post it was one kayaker and one rafter that perished on the
Illinois during the recent high water tragedy.
The kayaker was Jeff Alexander, a former Colorado resident. The article did not
give details as to what happened to Jeff, only that he drowned and was recovered by
his party, who left his body tied to a tree so it could be retrieved later.
That is all the info I currently have. If anyone else has more details I would
appreciate it if you could forward them on to me so I can post them on our safety
page so we can all learn from this tragedy.
Our thoughts are with the friends and families of those who will no longer paddle
the rivers with us.
Roger Lynn
Colorado White Water Association
Safety Chair
rl...@wang.com
roge...@sprintmail.com
http://www.earthnet.net/~cwwa
Jeff in Portland, OR, USA
From http://www.oregonlive.com
======================================
March 25, 1998
Officials say deaths won't end rafters' access to Illinois River
The Coast Guard retrieves the second body from the
white-water disaster, which might prompt a review of river policy
By J. Todd Foster of The Oregonian staff
AGNESS -- The National Weather Service cautioned
about the advancing storm, and the U.S. Forest Service issued verbal
warnings at the boat launch. But the ultimate decision to run the Illinois
River rested with the rafters and kayakers who later floated into a deadly
storm surge, officials said Tuesday.
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter gingerly slipped into
the river canyon one last time early Tuesday to retrieve the body of
37-year-old Jeff L. Alexander of Bolivar, Ohio.
The weekend white-water disaster, which left two
men dead and at least two survivors clinging to sheer, moss-covered cliffs,
might prompt a review of river access, officials said. But they stressed
that they cannot shut down a popular river.
In all, the Coast Guard rescued 10 floaters by
helicopter, and at least 10 others were able to ride out the 35-mile
stretch of wilderness river.
"We're concerned that two people died," said Sue
Olsen, a Forest Service spokeswoman. "There's talk among the district
ranger and the (Curry County) sheriff that we should get all the people
together and do a review.
"But it's a wild river. We can't limit access."
Don McLennan, a recreation assistant for the
Siskiyou National Forest's Illinois Valley Ranger District, spent Saturday
morning warning river runners of the water's impending rise and making sure
they had float permits.
Light rain had begun to fall, McLennan said, but
the river had not yet reacted.
"I didn't advise people not to go," he said.
"Hindsight tells me I should have. But we're not going to accept the
responsibility of when they can and can't go."
Mike Cooley, the recreation staff officer for the
forest, said white-water enthusiasts are required by law to obtain a permit
at the Selma Select Market, about 16 miles from the launch site at Miami
Bar.
The permit includes handouts and brochures that
warn of the Illinois River's volatile nature. Although the river is rated
for experts, there are no regulations governing when floaters can make the
run or how qualified they must be, officials said.
"There's no way we can physically restrain them,"
Cooley said. "These were floaters that had been up and down the river
several times.
"They knew the situation, the risks. They come a
long ways with a lot of equipment, and they want to go. It's hard to turn
around. That's the reality of it.
"It's like going to Yellowstone and finding no
campsites. What do you do?"
Forecasters first spied the approaching storm
Friday and broadcast it over the all-weather radio channels, said Chuck
Glaser, a National Weather Service spokesman in Medford.
By midday Saturday, the Illinois was churning at
2,010 cubic feet per second -- at the time, ideal conditions under sunny
skies. But the river began climbing quickly later Saturday, when the first
of more than 6 inches of warm rain pelted the area and unleashed a heavy
mountain snowpack.
By 10 p.m. Saturday, the river was running at 2,400
cubic feet per second; 12 hours later, it was at 7,627. In six more hours,
it nearly doubled.
Curry County Deputy Sheriff Larry Adcock, search
incident commander, said there have been five rescues in the past five
years on the Illinois River, but "we've never lost a life."
"I don't think they were paying attention to any of
the weather forecasts," he said. "This river goes up and blasts out
overnight."
On Monday, four Coast Guard helicopters from
Humboldt Bay in California, North Bend and Astoria plucked 10 survivors
from high ground or cliff walls. The body of Aloha resident Wilbur Gale
Byars, a Deschutes River guide and Beaverton school bus driver, was
recovered Monday, a day before his 63rd birthday.
The small raft Alexander shared with Dorie
Brownell, 32, of Portland flipped 18 miles downriver at a rapid called
Little Green Wall. They were with three kayakers.
One of them paddled over to Alexander but, finding
him dead, lashed the body to a tree. That's where the Coast Guard recovered
it early Tuesday after the river had receded.
A beachcomber found Alexander's helmet Monday night
where the Rogue River meets the Pacific Ocean, 38 miles downstream.
The helicopter rescues and recoveries were as
harrowing as the white-water runs, Coast Guard officials said.
Richard Hall, a rescue swimmer, said at times, the
rotor tips from the HH-60 Jayhawk helicopter had only 3 to 5 feet of
clearance inside the canyon walls.
The three other Coast Guard helicopters were the
much smaller HH-65A Dolphin, which has a shorter fuel range but greater
maneuverability.
Dangling from the helicopter by a tether, Hall
crept along the side of the cliff, walking his way toward two stranded
floaters 300 feet up while the blades whirled over him.
"I didn't want to look up," he said. "It was
probably the most dangerous flight I've been on."
Coast Guard officials said no one involved in the
rafting accident, even the party of five that launched Sunday, would have
to pay for their rescues. Only in the event of confirmed hoaxes does the
agency go to court to recover rescue costs, said Lt.j.g. Matt Brewer.
Dave Brooks of Gold Beach, a passenger on the last
raft to make it through safely, camped just below the Green Wall, the most
fearsome rapid on the Illinois. He described areas on the river with
15-foot-high waves, compared with a normal 3 feet.
"We dodged a bullet," he said. "I've never seen
that river with that amount of water that fast. It was unimaginable. It
commanded extreme respect."
Margie Gultry, John Griffith and Jonathan Brinckman
of The Oregonian staff contributed to this report, along with The
Associated Press.
JIM
I have to hand it to the Coast Guard. I don't think steep canyon
rescues are part of their training.
These people are THE BEST! You want to risk your life saving paddlers?
I know we risk our lives paddling. That is our choice. You pay your
money, and you take your chances.
I hope I never need rescue. If at some time I screw up, I hope th USCG
is around.
"Experiance is the best teacher, but pain is quicker"