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Bystanders try to avert drowning at Dougan Falls

By John Branton
Published: July 10, 2010, 12:00am

A 14-year-old boy was flown to a hospital by Life Flight helicopter Friday afternoon after his leg became pinned between large rocks in a pool of rushing water at rugged and remote Dougan Falls, on the upper Washougal River about 17 miles from Washougal.

Two witnesses described a dramatic rescue effort in which two men and a woman stood in the frigid pool below a small waterfall, struggling to hold the trapped teen’s head above water as he fought to survive for perhaps an hour or more before official rescuers arrived.

“I was just so impressed and in awe of the resilience the boy had,” said Lacey Barlow, 23, who had gone to the falls to swim with friends. “He fought for so long.”

Barlow and another woman said the boy had turned blue and appeared unconscious after a large group of swimmers finally used a rope to dislodge his leg from the rocks and pull him from the water.

Rescuers were called to the scene at 12:45 p.m., and the boy, once freed, was airlifted to Southwest Washington Medical Center, according to a bulletin from Chief Criminal Deputy Pat Bond with the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office.

The boy, whose name was not released, is a resident of Wilsonville, Ore., and his medical condition at the medical center wasn’t known late Friday night, the bulletin said.

Jill Clark, a Portland resident, said she’d been at Dougan Falls to enjoy the water with her children on the hot afternoon when she first realized something was wrong.

“People ran by me to go call 911,” she said. “You could tell they were frantic by the look on their faces.”

The area has no cell phone service, and the folks who wanted to call 911 would have to drive to the nearest home, Clark said.

Looking to see what was happening, she saw three people standing in several feet of water below the small waterfall, trying to hold the teen’s head above the rushing water.

“They brought in an inner tube for the kid to hold onto,” Clark said. “They said his leg was wedged between rocks. They couldn’t pull him out. They were struggling to keep the kid up. They did everything they could.”

“The water is really intense there,” said Barlow, also a Portland resident. “It pushes you down. He went under the water and came back up. He was like screaming his leg was caught.”

As the two men and woman standing in the cold water tried to hold onto the teen, a large group of other swimmers tried standing close together above the pool, trying to block the water flow with their bodies, Barlow said.

Someone strung a rope across the river to try to help the teen stay above water, Barlow said.

“The water was rushing into his mouth. He could barely breathe. That went on for an hour before the ambulance came,” Barlow said.

When official rescuers finally arrived, both women said, they felt the officials did too little to help the people in the water with the drowning teen.

One of the men in the pool yelled for someone to take his place and a man did, Barlow said. Meanwhile, “The boy was like in and out of consciousness. They were trying to hold him up.”

A diver suited up with scuba gear and went into the water to help, and tried to give the boy air from a tank.

Finally, both women said, a group of swimmers pulled hard on a rope around the boy’s chest.

“It took a lot of force to get him out of the water,” Barlow said. “They were pulling on the rope and yelling.”

Pulled loose from the rocks and water, Barlow said, the boy was “completely blue, dark, dark blue and completely unconscious, but his legs were intact.”

Critical of the work that official rescuers performed, Barlow said it was the swimmers and bystanders who took action.

“I have such gratitude,” she said. “They had such resilience and love in their hearts to be in this water.”

Clark said she believes the official rescuers should have sent more people into the water besides the one diver to help the boy stay above water.

“They didn’t get in the water to take over for the other civilians,” she said. “I feel they were really wrong in how they handled this.”

Officials weren’t available late Friday to respond to the complaints.

A sheriff’s bulletin described the action taken by rescuers with the sheriff’s dive team, Skamania County Emergency Medical Services and Fire District 4, East County Fire & Rescue and the Technical Rescue Team of the Vancouver Fire Department and Clark County Fire District 6:

“While divers were attempting to free the victim and assist him in the water, a line was set and anchored on the South side of the river. The line was then brought to the middle area where the victim was and then anchored on the North side. Bystanders and rescuers then pulled, creating a leverage point with the victim, and he was freed. Advanced life support (ALS) was initiated immediately by EMS personnel from multiple agencies. While ALS was occurring, members from VFD & CCFD #6 set up a low angle rope rescue to assist with evacuating the victim from the river level for transportation to Life Flight.”

John Branton: 360-735-4513 or john.branton@columbian.com.

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