Rafter Rescued from Near-Drowning in Boise River

Aug. 8--A 58-year-old woman was pinned head-down in the Boise River when the raft she was floating in snagged on a fallen tree in the channel and flipped over.

The unidentified woman was unconscious, not breathing and had no pulse when she was freed from the snag and pulled ashore. Her bathing suit was caught on the tree.

In essence, she drowned.

But the swift actions of city police, firefighters and the Fire Department dive team brought the woman back to life. They performed CPR, breathing life back into her limp body.

"It was a cold-water drowning -- and a resuscitation," Boise Fire Assistant Chief Dave Hanneman said. "Everybody did an excellent job on this rescue."

The woman was taken to St. Luke's Boise Regional Medical Center.. Her condition was not available late Tuesday.

Those who'd seen the dangerous tree in the river just east of the Capitol Street Bridge in Boise had notified the dive team just a half-hour before the accident, a fire official said.

The cold river water, which can numb exposed hands and feet during a two- or three-hour float, may have increased the woman's chances of survival.

"People have a mammalian reflex, a nerve in your face," Hanneman said. "It slows your metabolism down. People have survived over an hour under water."

Calls for help started coming in to Ada County dispatch at 5:42 p.m., Hanneman said.

Lewis Hower, 24, who was floating the Boise River at that time, said the raft that the victim and her 31-year-old son and 9-year-old grandson were traveling in flipped.

"She was jammed between the raft and the log," said Hower, whose knuckle was bleeding after he scrambled up through the dense brush along the bank to call for help. "You could see only her feet."

Her son and grandson were able to swim to safety.

Hower said that when he saw the raft flip, he also was concerned about a nearby group of kids floating the river without life jackets. He ushered them away from the dangerous area.

The Greenbelt was thick with cyclists when the woman became trapped. They gathered to watch rescue efforts.

Cyclist Tony Lukach said he'd heard the woman was trapped for 15 minutes.

"They had to find her. She was trapped under a log," said another cyclist, Shawn Atkinson, 16,.

The teens had also heard that the woman was trapped -- head under water -- for 10 minutes or longer.

No one knew for sure how long.

"It's hard to speculate," Hanneman said. "(In an emergency), time seems like forever. They think it was a half hour, but (maybe) it was four minutes."

Hanneman said a Boise police officer who was at nearby Boise State University was on the scene quickly. Boise firefighters and the department's dive team responded in full force.

"They climbed down on the limb, and basically, she had to be cut off. They had to cut her bathing suit off. Her bathing suit was what was stuck on the log," Hanneman said.

That freed the woman, who floated to where the dive team could pull her ashore.

After the woman was taken to the hospital, the dive team went back into the river and cut out the dangerous limb.

"Our river is a dynamic river. Those kinds of things (falling trees and limbs) are always happening," Hanneman said. "You have to pay attention to your surroundings. You could get washed up into a tree pretty easy."

Katy Moeller: 377-6413

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