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Courage marked actions of swimmers in teen’s rescue

Witnesses recount ordeal at Dougan Falls; some say more training needed for public officials

By John Branton
Published: July 30, 2010, 12:00am

Read more: After nearly downing at Dougan Falls, teen is out of the woods in what doctor says is “an incredible outcome”

When Jeff and Katryna Neice first learned something was wrong near Dougan Falls, on the upper Washougal River, they were playing with their toddler, Xandir, who was in a little blow-up boat in a pool above a waterfall.

It was shortly after noon on July 9, a warm, sunny Friday. The Neices were visiting the area on a break from active duty with the U.S. Air Force in New Mexico.

Katryna Neice, 22, had seen a teenage boy jump into the water and they heard people yelling.

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Jeff Neice, 24, climbed down the rocks and entered the water below the waterfall. Katryna yelled, too, and swimmers and sunbathers came from all around.

It was a desperate situation.

Kea Rodrigues, 14, had gone over the 6-foot waterfall called Lower Dougan Falls, where the entire flow of the river in Skamania County was squeezed between large boulders in a chute estimated at 10 to 15 feet wide.

In the churning, frothy ice-cold pool below, Kea’s leg had become wedged between the rocks, and was being held in place by the water’s force.

Trapped under the waterfall, Kea was calling for help and fighting to breathe.

Jed Schultz, 38, Katryna Neice’s stepfather, also jumped into the water, so cold it took his breath away.

“We jumped in trying to see how he was stuck,” Jeff Neice said later. “He was in the white-out part of the water, and you could barely see the top of his shoulders and his head.”

Going under, Schultz felt Kea’s leg, wedged from foot to knee in the rocks.

As the two men and others fought the plunging water, both spoke to Kea, trying to give him hope.

Schultz said his legs were cramping as someone handed them a large inner tube. They managed to get it over Kea’s head, and his arms over it. That helped for a while, but the boy was losing his strength.

The men tried locking their arms under Kea’s armpits, and managed to hold his head just above the water.

“We held that position for probably a good 30 minutes or so,” Schultz said. “And then we started getting weaker.”

A woman who’d come into the pool early on, Heidi Frawley, was trying to give Kea rescue breaths. Swimmers later commended Frawley, of Gresham, Ore., a friend of Kea’s family, for her courage, strength and determination to save him.

As some swimmers got out of the water, others relieved them.

Help was on the way, but the falls area is remote, 17 miles upriver from the city of Washougal, in Skamania County.

Witnesses tried using cell phones, but service wasn’t available. Someone rushed to a nearby home, where a resident called for help at 12:48 p.m.

The first public official to arrive, 12 minutes later, was Deputy Steve Rasmussen with the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Arne Gonser, an experienced scuba diver who was rushing to the falls, had ordered Rasmussen to serve as radio operator, to observe and relay information to 911 dispatchers and others on the way, according to the sheriff’s official report.

Skamania County Emergency Medical Services was called, and volunteers with Skamania County Fire District 4.

At 1:17 p.m., 29 minutes into the call, Gonser arrived. Donning his scuba gear, he entered the water at 1:29 p.m. He would be the only public official who entered the water to help Kea, officials have confirmed.

As the need for rope systems to dislodge Kea from the rocks became clear, officials called for the joint Technical Rescue Team of the Vancouver Fire Department and Clark County Fire District 6, many miles away in Vancouver. They wouldn’t arrive in time.

“I entered the water below the scene and dropped down to approximately 8 feet in depth,” Gonser said. “Working my way upstream toward the entrapment, I came across a huge submerged boulder, approximately 10 feet in diameter. I attempted to penetrate from each side, but the entire flow of the river was being diverted around the boulder, and I couldn’t make my way upstream any farther.”

Gonser then rose to the water’s surface and tried reaching Kea’s trapped leg from upstream. But the surging water was too powerful — and so frothy he couldn’t see Kea’s legs.

“At this time, Rodrigues kept going under water and the rescue bystanders were getting exhausted,” Gonser said.

Gonser took off his air tank and, helped by Frawley, tried to let Kea breathe from his mouthpiece, but the teen couldn’t.

“Rodrigues at this time was glassy-eyed and was not breathing on his own,” Gonser said. “Using the purge valve on the scuba rig, an occasional blast of air was blown into his mouth.”

At that point, Gonser said, “we started grabbing the ropes on scene.”

One rope, he said, had been strung across the river by medics before he arrived, to help stabilize the rescuers in the water.

Then he saw another rope, an orange one, under the water. Someone said it was tied to Kea, but it wasn’t.

Gonser said he tied a slip knot in the rope and “we put it over his head and around his chest. We were getting pummeled by white water and couldn’t see what we were doing.”

Bystanders upstream pulled, but the rope slipped off Kea’s body, which had gone limp.

But the rescuers fastened the rope again, this time to Kea’s waist.

Plenty of people upstream pulled hard on the rope that last time, by all accounts, and Kea’s body, blue and looking lifeless, came free.

It was 1:46 p.m., 58 minutes after the first call for help.

In seconds, paramedics waiting on the shore several feet away began performing CPR and administering lifesaving drugs, Gonser said.

“They worked on him over a half-hour.”

A Life Flight helicopter flew Kea to Southwest Washington Medical Center. Kea then was taken to The Children’s Hospital at Legacy Emanuel in Portland.

He survived and is expected to make a full recovery, hospital officials announced Wednesday.

More training needed?

Many swimmers who rescued Kea, and other witnesses told The Columbian that more public officials should have helped in the water.

“All I know is, there was a lot of officials standing around,” said swimmer Izaak Henthorn, 30, of Vancouver, who said he and the other rescuers were cold and exhausted. “I think they should have been more involved. I really thought there should have been more guidance. The only official who got in the water was the diver. It wasn’t super-dangerous, I didn’t think.”

“It seemed there was a lot of disorganization among the emergency staff,” added Adam Webster, 23, of Vancouver, one of the rescuers in the water. “It just didn’t feel like they were the ones who stepped up and took control of the situation.”

But Skamania County Sheriff Dave Brown said the first officials at the scene, except for Gonser, were not trained to go into the water safely in such cases — and, in fact, are told explicitly not to go beyond their levels of training.

Also, Brown said, officials with the fire and EMS agencies work on orders of their own commanders.

Those commanders declined to comment for this story.

“Our first priority is the personal safety of the rescuers,” Brown said. “We do not desire to put anyone in a position that will potentially create a need for a second rescue situation.”

“Maybe something will come of this,” said rescuer Neice. “Maybe they’ll get some training so they can help somebody in the future.”

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

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