Two men saved in dramatic rescue on the river
By Lori Berglund — Daily Freeman-Journal Editor
POSTED: June 10, 2008
Article Photos
The Knife River site is one many area residents may know as “Anderson Pit,” a gravel quarry that Knife River has been using this spring to haul rock for Hamilton County. It was about 2:45 Monday afternoon, shortly after the crest of the worst flood on the Boone River since 1954, but Davis was hoping to get back to work if the water had gone down just enough.
That’s when he noticed something orange in the river. He was perhaps a quarter of a mile away from the river, but that blaze orange did the job it’s meant to do — it caught his eye.
“The guy in the orange vest really stuck out,” Davis said.
Davis could see what appeared to be two people clinging to a canoe as the swift-moving current moved it down the flooded river. He could barely make out the person wearing black, but that orange figure clinging to the back of the canoe prompted Davis to action. He got some binoculars from his vehicle and looked again, and then he called 911.
But cell phone coverage, and even law enforcement radio service, is sketchy down by the river. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Davis got through to the 911 Dispatch Center at the Hamilton County Courthouse and told them what he had seen before the cell phone connection was broken. He changed locations and called back, but this time his cell phone call was directed to the Webster County Dispatch Center in Fort Dodge. Things were getting confusing.
In the meantime, the Hamilton County dispatcher had already put out the distress call. Chief Deputy Scott McConnell was on duty Monday afternoon and was busy working another case when he heard the radio report that two men were clinging to a canoe in the Boone River. The caller had estimated the location as 290th Street and Inkpaduta Avenue. It was an estimate, those two roads never intersect, but it was enough.
While cell phone reports are not always reliable — prompting many a wild goose chase from callers unfamiliar with the local territory — McConnell never doubted this call for a minute.
“He had too much information—two people clinging to a canoe,” McConnell said.
He knew it was a good call, and he headed to the Tunnel Mill Bridge to see what he could see.
At the same time, the Hamilton County dispatcher was working to get the caller back on the line. Davis answered and confirmed the information. In fact, he did more than that, he also went looking himself and came upon McConnell at the Tunnel Mill Bridge.
As they watched two people being swept by in the river far beneath them, Davis looked at McConnell and said, “I wasn’t imagining it.”
At the same time, the dispatcher was calling out even more emergency responders. Fire and Rescue Departments in Kamrar, Stratford, Stanhope and Webster City all were scrambling with personnel and equipment. A request was also made to get the Boone County Search and Rescue team on the road with their water rescue craft.
Estimating how long it would take the river to carry the victims to different river access points, the decision was made to stage the rescue work on the Boone River bridge at Stagecoach Road, north of Stratford. Ambulances and rescue vehicles parked on the bridge and Hamilton County Conservation staff put in the water with a boat that seemed much too small for an angry Boone River. From atop the bridge, firefighters dropped down hoses for anyone in the water to grab, should rescue efforts in the river itself fail.
And then they waited.
Nothing.
Nothing could be seen coming down the river. As more rescue workers gathered at the river, the decision was made to move the staging to Bells Mills, further up the river. Law enforcement personnel called back and asked dispatch to “get Ralph in the air.”
Ralph Storm, veteran pilot and owner of Storm Flying Service in Webster City, is game for anything. He climbed into his spray plane and spotted the victims in the river in very short order. Landing on a tiny strip of dry land big enough only for Storm to land on, he told law enforcement officers just south of Bells Mill what he had seen and where the victims were — at a small bend in the river where one of his pilots had once been hurt while canoeing.
“I can put down some smoke and show them right where they’re at,” Storm told an emergency responder stationed on the road south of Bells Mill where he had landed. In a near-vertical take-off, Storm was quickly back up in the air, circling and putting down smoke as rescuers at the Bells Mill bridge got ready.
“They’re coming,” someone yelled on the bridge. But, as something floating in the river came closer, it was apparent that it was a false alarm, just a piece of debris being swept along by the flooded waters.
The Boone County Rescue Team put their boat in the river and headed upstream.
Storm continued circling overhead. An air ambulance had been summoned and McConnell, from the ground, did a little air traffic control work.
‘Make sure the helicopter sees the plane up there,” McConnell advised over the radio.
The air over Bells Mill was busy Monday afternoon, as the Storm plane, two air ambulances and one news helicopter all could be spotted at different times.
But on the ground, the wait continued. The Boone County Rescue Team had disappeared behind a bend on the river. Ambulances and a large assortment of rescue vehicles filled the Bells Mill bridge and road on both sides.
And then the call came through at 10 minutes before 4 p.m., the two-man Boone County team of Brian Pontius and Dallas Wingate reported two men, in their 70s, safe in the boat.
They sped back to Bells Mill to be met by paramedics and EMTs.
The old men were ash-gray and appeared dazed when the rescue boat arrived back at Bells Mill. One of them was sitting up in the rescue craft, another was on his back.
Never once did any of the rescuers — almost all of them volunteers who had left their own jobs to help — never once did they ask these two men what had possessed them to take a canoe out on the flooded river.
They asked how they were… ‘are you hurting… are you cold… what can we do for you?’
McConnell did have one question: “Make sure it was just the two of them.”
He wasn’t going to call off the rescue if there was a chance that there had been a third person in the canoe or another canoe travelling with them.
They gave their names: Heber Johnson, 77 years old, and Donald Johnson 67 years old. Brothers, the two men live together in Webster City and have little other family.
Both men, while cold and weak, confirmed that it had been just the two of them. They had put in the river at Webster City at about noon. The canoe flipped about an hour later. They had spent up to three hours in the cold river waters before being rescued.
The old men, suffering from hypothermia were quickly wrapped in blankets and taken into the protection of waiting ambulances.
Pontius and Wingate, both sheriff’s deputies in Boone County, made the rescue sound easy. They pulled their rescue craft along side the two men and hauled them in, one by one. One of them was clinging to a pile of debris; the other was simply being carried along in the current. There was no longer any sign of the canoe. They had been careful, of course, not to slip in the water themselves as they pulled the men and their water-sogged life jackets into the rescue craft.
Atop the hill south of Bells Mill, two ambulances waited, each with one victim inside, for the air ambulances to land. First Iowa Methodist Medical Center and then Mercy AirLife set down in a small pasture. The volunteers lined up, at least four on a side, resembling a line of pallbearers, to carry each gurney down a steep ditch to the waiting helicopter.
It was over. They were safe.
The rescuers gathered on the road and made sure everyone was safe, none of them left in the river. Plenty of people had come to help. One Stratford area man had put his own boat in the river in a flooded cornfield, hoping to take a short cut and get their quick. But he ran into closed fences and got stuck in the mud. The river isn’t safe, even for experienced hands.
One person at the site urged, “Tell the county we need a boat like that one,” the Boone County craft that had quickly completed the rescue. The reporter promised to deliver that message via this article. (Promise kept, checked.)
The rescuers counted up who was there and who had helped. Webster City Police located the men’s trailer where they had put in at Webster City. Fire Departments from Kamrar, Stanhope, Stratford and Webster City were thanked. Hamilton County Conservation had come with their boat and several staff members. Ralph Storm was very glad to help. Even off-duty deputies jumped in their patrol cars and came to the scene to assist.
It was noted just how lucky these two men had been. They made one terrible decision — to get in the river — but they also put on life vests. Without them, McConnell said they would have been dead long before any rescue could have been made.
Another fortunate decision: One of the life jackets was orange. Had they both been black, as the one man was wearing, Charlie Davis might not have even noticed them floating by on the river a quarter of a mile away.
Davis was definitely in the right place at the right time.
“I’m glad everything ended up well for them. They’re very fortunate,” Davis said Monday night.
He had been concerned enough to go to Bells Mill and stay to watch the rescue.
They were, fortunate, also, that rescuers could even reach them. Farther down the river, the water is so high that it is impossible for a canoe, let alone a rescue craft, to even pass under the final bridge before the Boone River dumps into the Des Moines River near Stratford. The first Des Moines River bridge is also impassable.
As things were winding down Monday afternoon, McConnell had one message for the public:
“Don’t go on the river. It’s way, way, way, too dangerous.”
Contact Lori Berglund at editor@freemanjournal.net
