Called out at 1955 and just got back at 0200

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Gary D.

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Location
Post Falls, Idaho
# of dives
I'm a Fish!
We just had a nasty head on boat accident within feet of the fatal we had on July 4th.

Wew know of 6 victims so far but there may be more. We think we have everyoue and they are alive but there is some question about possibly two more that may be missing.

Four of the victims from the sunk boat had a combined weight of 1100+ pounds and were all injured. Plus a cool Basset Hound and a Yippy A-hole dust mop with legs.

One boat went to one side of the river and sank at the shore line. The other went across the river to the other side and burned to the ground.

I'll post more later. I'm flippin pooped out.

Gary D.
 
Gary D.:
We just had a nasty head on boat accident within feet of the fatal we had on July 4th. I'll post more later. I'm flippin' pooped out.
Gary D.

No wonder you're pooped! You folks are dangerous up there! You need to ban swimming, diving, and boating (and perhaps driving near water) in Post Falls, Idaho. You've got more recreational disasters per capita per day than the rest of the country combined.

Of course, it's job security for you. :scared:

Cheers!
 
Wobbles and I had just gotten home from a nice dinner in town. I had just changed into some yard working cut-off jeans and was headed outside when at 1955 I hear the dreaded “BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP”.

I look at the pager and it reads: “Dive team callout CDA river near Black Lake. Boat fire with subjects in the water”. No boat fire is good and this is the second one in a month.

At 1956 I’m in the car lit up and in service. We are directed to respond to the boathouse, as we have no access to that area other than by boat or chopper.

At 2004 I have covered the 8 miles and start transferring gear to the big boat.

At 2010 we are underway for an hour long trip to the south of Coeur d’Alene lake then several miles up the narrow river plugged with hot weekend traffic.

I know we PO’ed a lot of people on the way down. Doing 55 mph in a boat that big through all that traffic just irritates people.

We keep getting conflicting reports of the scene and our two south boats have already transferred medical to the scene from Harrison. Now the marine crews have their hands full fighting the fire. Not on the water as we thought but a grass fire.

We come into scene with still some daylight available and all our mouths drop. Now we know why we have a grass fire but still can’t believe it.

This is what we THINK happened so far: Two boatloads of drunks are on the river running wide open in opposite directions. One boat has 4 on board with a combined people weight of roughly 1100 pounds.

The second boat has two (or more) on board, we still don’t know for sure. But it hits the boat with four almost bow to bow. It then goes into the air and flies onto the shore that is covered in waist deep dry grass. Then instead of just stopping it explodes.

When we get there all we saw was a grass fire. When we went over there later all that was left was some molten metal. The entire boat was gone.

Thanks to the quick action of the two south lake crews they not only got help for the victims, but also went right into fire fighting mode. Had those boats not washed water up into that grass we could have had a major forest fire on our hands.

We had two choppers at the scene but due to the size of the victims they couldn’t transport everyone. So we elect to leave them on the Fireboat and take them several miles up stream to a real rough ramp.

So guess what? The south Fireboat is only 3 weeks old and they are still training with it. It is not officially in service yet. The crew is unsure about that big 35 footer in the river and does not know where the ramp is.

So most of you know we have one of the best working relationships between fire and law enforcement in the country if not the world. Still with that same attitude the give us the boat. They crew it and work on the victims while I pilot it. Now that’s trust. Give a $200K brand spanking new boat to another agency to fly up a narrow dark river.

It’s a 30-minute trip to a ramp with no dock. I gently slid the boat onto the ramp sideways so we were only 3’ from the dry ground. Once we got unloaded we went back to the scene. I was roasting as we had been suited up for a couple of hours so on the trip back I got out of the suit. Relief at last.

As of this writing we still do not know if anyone is still missing. We dove the total zero Vis water around where the second boat landed but we are still clueless as to the total number of victims.

We did get a missing person report from a kid early this morning. He said his dad is not home and was boating with two guys. The two guys he was supposed to be with are the two from the burnt boat. Lets just pray that he got lucky and is shacked up somewhere and not plugged into the bottom.

So we did have a boat burn to the ground and not just the waterline. Another first in all the years we have been doing this.

Went out of service at 0202.

Gary D.

ps: I don't know why they don't recomend using Alcohol for boat fuel. That's what seems to be the fuel of choice around here, just the wrong tank.
 
BigJetDriver69:
No wonder you're pooped! You folks are dangerous up there! You need to ban swimming, diving, and boating (and perhaps driving near water) in Post Falls, Idaho. You've got more recreational disasters per capita per day than the rest of the country combined.

Of course, it's job security for you. :scared:

Cheers!
That is not a joke. The entire Pacific Northwest has got to be the countries biggest nut cases when it comes to water. No matter how many we train or arrest they just don't let anything stick in the gray matter.

Kootenai County has to be the leader of the pack. We get so many people moving here from the city without a clue and go burzerk.

I'm only posting what the team gets called out for. The Marine Deputies get 100+ times the calls we do and a lot of the time they are the ones that request us. Two on the Dive team are in Marine. The Sgt. and the full time deputy. In a couple of months they will rotate positions and the Sgt. will be replaced with another team member Sgt.. We aren't sure about who will replace the deputy yet. The rest of marine are seasonal.

Job security.

Gary D.
 
Keep up the good work Gary. There are people out there that appreciate it.
 
Well, the missing person the kid reported was factual and dad was in the boat that exploded.

But dad, being the brave soul he is and having his courage heightened by massive amounts of alcohol, fled the scene leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Sorry SOB. He was treated at an out of the area hospital and released.

Initially we thought we had 4 in the vessel that didn’t burn and two in the exploding vessel. What ended up was 4, yes that is FOUR in each boat.

All said and done we had only one that wasn’t injured but they all survived.

It appears at this point that the weenie roaster is at fault.

The exploding boat came to rest 63’10” SE from our fatal accident on the 4th of July.

Yesterday in a 24-hour period we had 693 calls for service. 222 of those were marine calls and the rest patrol calls. Those poor guys in Marine work their butts off. I did that for 5 years and sorry guy’s, no more.

See, our boaters are frickin nut cases.

Gary D.
 
Great job! Whether the stupid SOBs that you were helping ever thank you or not. It's nice to know that you guys are out there.

-Grier
 
Yesterday in a 24-hour period we had 693 calls for service. 222 of those were marine calls and the rest patrol calls. Those poor guys in Marine work their butts off. I did that for 5 years and sorry guy’s, no more.

See, our boaters are frickin nut cases.

Gary:

I live along the Allegheny River in Western Pennsylvania. The area is reported to have the most registered power boats, second only to Dade County Florida in the US. We don't have 222 calls in the entire area in 10 years. Do they have boater safety requirements in your jurisdiction?

If I weren't 47 and firmly entrenched in PA, I'd apply. Boating, diving, and law enforcement. What a job!
 

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