Disaster on the river

Teen tubing the Stillwater gets caught on snag

By NANCY KIMBALL

The Daily Inter Lake

A summer afternoon float down Stillwater River quickly took a disastrous turn for three teenage boys Thursday afternoon when one of the boys was sucked into an underwater snag after his inner tube flipped.

The current drew him close to the river bank, where he got tangled in the branches of a dead log.

He was unresponsive when Flathead Search and Rescue Coordinator Jordan White pulled him from the water shortly after 4 p.m.

Kalispell ambulance took him to Kalispell Regional Medical Center where he was being treated at press time. The boy's name was not released immediately, although his age was put at 15 by some officials on the scene.

A 911 emergency call came in at 3:50 p.m., reporting a person trapped under water where the Stillwater River winds near the end of Riverside Drive in Evergreen.

Evergreen and Kalispell fire departments, Kalispell police, Flathead Search and Rescue and Flathead County sheriff's deputies were on the scene within minutes.

As their water rescue efforts got under way, the other two teenage boys huddled together in the field adjoining the river bank, still in their swim trunks and apparently stunned.

The two boys had just finished trying to free their friend. But with his life jacket caught on the underwater log's dead branches and the river's current holding him under the surface, they could not.

A young construction worker, who was part of a crew working near a home across that field, said the boys ran to him for help. He said he headed back to the river with them to check out their report that their friend was in trouble.

When he saw the boy trapped under the water, he said, he called 911 on his cell phone.

White said that, when he arrived six minutes after the initial call, he found bystanders near the river bank and the boy's life jacket caught on the snag.

The rescuer was lowered into the river near the boy. White found the teen still buckled into his life jacket, but the straps were pulled tight from the force of the current so he could not unfasten them.

White said he cut the straps in order to extricate the boy and pull him free of the snag.

Paramedics immediately started working with the patient and took him to the hospital.

White said that, although in this case the life jacket seems to have been what caught on the snag, the jackets still are a must-have piece of safety gear.

"Just like seat belts can occasionally harm when they're intended to do good," White said, "you've got to keep in mind these pieces of safety equipment, in a majority of circumstances, truly do save lives.

"For the tiny percentage of times they might get someone in trouble, it's not worth the risk of not wearing one," White said.

"In a case like this, like a log jam scenario, it might have saved him - he might have gotten hung up in (the snag) either way."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com