I was recently going through old paperwork and found narrative statements from this incident written by myself and Ian McMullen shortly after it occurred. Rather than have them sit in a folder forever I thought it would be best to have them stored in the AW incident database for anyone to learn from.
Ians Statement from 2011. Slightly edited to remove information not related to the incident.
Here is the recount of an event having a time frame of roughly an hour and a half from start to finish where the only sign that anything had taken place was littered medical wrappers and a piece of kayak foam. Luke, Jason and I had just finished running a rapid on the Moose River known as Iron Bridge. While regrouping in an eddy at the bottom of the rapid we spotted for two others, not of our paddling group, just to make sure that they ran it okay. The first to run it, Bill DeAngelis, flipped and rolled up then paddled into the eddy. The second, Jeff Berger, flipped at the same spot and exited his boat. Immediately I went after him in an attempt to get him and his gear to the side of the river. As I peeled out of the eddy I looked over my shoulder and was happy to see that Luke, on the same page as I, had peeled out as well and was right behind me to help. We tried to push him and his gear to shore but we were not able to do so before he was carried by the water to the lip of a five foot drop, where he became pinned under his boat. Luke and I hastily jumped out of our boats and grabbed our throw bags (rope packed in a bag to throw for rescue purposes) and I threw a rope to Jeff right away. Luke and I quickly made our way upstream with the rope so as to get a better angle to swing/pull Jeff back in along the ledge he was stuck on. I held the rope and Luke had firm hold of my life jacket shoulder straps to make sure that I wouldn’t get pulled in. Having at least two people on the rescuer end of the rope is what you really want. At about this time Jason, who had also come to help, told Jeff to let his kayak go and Jeff jumped over the top of his boat as Luke and I began to pull him in and put tension on the rope so he could crawl along the ledge. With Jeff in safely, Jason got back in his boat to recover Jeff’s which at the time was floating downstream. Bill, who was paddling with Jeff that day, also went after the kayak.
After Luke and I got the rope packed back up and got are stuff back together we got back in our kayaks and threaded our way through the ledge to make our way downstream to see if we could give Jason and Bill a hand. We saw Jason’s bright blue kayak up on the side of the river and were puzzled because there were no others with it. Jeff’s boat was not there and neither was Bill’s. We paddled around, looking over the horizon line for signs of what was going on and caught sight of Jason, waving signals at us to make sure that we didn’t paddle over it. Immediately we knew something was very wrong. We could see Jason was using his throw bag from the shore so we paddled quickly to a steep rock island in the river on the other side of this horizon line and with a rush of adrenaline we jumped out of our boats and threw them up over the rocks on the island, grabbed our throw bags and got down to water level. The first thing we saw was a kayak flushing out of the hydraulic and a person, Bill, recirculating in this hole which looked eerily like a lowhead dam. Jason had already thrown his rope a couple times but apparently Bill had been unresponsive and was not grabbing the rope or making any effort to attempt to swim out of the hole, despite Jason’s instruction. When Luke and I arrived on scene we yelled in an attempt to get Bill’s attention. Bill seemed to turn toward us and it looked as though he was making eye contact. I yelled for him to grab the rope and threw my bag, draping the rope right on him; again Luke was right there holding my life jacket however neither effort was to any avail. He did not grab the rope, nor make motions to grab the rope. We agreed that someone was going to have to go into the hole and grab Bill to get him out – this was one of the scariest whitewater scenarios to run and none of us had done it before. There is something about swimming into a hole that someone cannot get out of that is much less than appealing. Luke ran to his boat and quickly grabbed a carabiner with which to clip a throw rope on somebody who would swim into the hole, grab Bill and then be pulled out by other members of the crew.
Jason had also realized that we needed to get in there to grab him and all within the course of seconds he had swam across the current and Luke and I had floated ourselves across a channel while holding onto a log, all to convene on a spit of rock in the middle of the river. Just then, Bill went face down and continued to churn in the hole and all three of knew that one of us needed to get in there RIGHT THEN. There was very little discussion and we clipped the rope to the safety harness on Jason’s life jacket. He said, “You’d better pull me in,” although I don’t recall it from the moment, and he jumped in to the river, swimming and scrabbling off the river bottom to fight the current and get to the hole and to Bill. He made it in, grabbed Bill and I pulled him with Luke spotting me, to the spit of rock. Luke and I grabbed Bill from Jason and pulled him out of the river onto this rock, got his helmet and life jacket off and immediately began doing CPR. We sounded three shrill whistle blasts, the universal signal for emergency and help and Jason paddled to where he could get the message to my dad, onshore, to call 911. For roughly thirty to forty-five minutes, Luke and I switched on and off between doing compressions and rescue breathing on Bill, until EMS arrived. When they arrived Jason had also arrived back on scene and clipped a throw rope on me, I got Bill in a swimmer’s carry and they pendulumed me across the channel. That is about as accurate a recount of the event as I can give
My own statement from 2011 with some removal of information not relating to the incident.
As we sat in the Eddy we saw another kayaker, Bill, running down a bad line on the rapid and he was flipped in a crashing wave. He failed his roll a couple of times before he managed to flip up successfully. A second boater, Jeff, then came down and flipped in the same spot. He was not so lucky and didn’t manage to roll his kayak upright so he swam. Ian and I immediately paddled out to help him. We tried to reach him on the river right of the rapid but we were unable to get him to shore before he became pinned by his boat on a rock ledge that dropped in to a nasty hydraulic below. Ian and I saw this danger and eddied out to try and throw a rope to him. We went up shore to a rock outcropping and Ian threw his rope to Jeff. Jeff grabbed hold and Ian and I signaled for him to push his boat over and hold on. Jeff shoved his boat to the side and jumped into the current while Ian and I pulling on the rope. He swam a short distance above the ledge until he was able to stand and walk to shore.
When we got Jeff to shore we got back into our boats to go and help Jason and Bill get Jeff’s boat. As we were paddling downstream we heard a whistle blow three times from Jason which meant there was an emergency. We saw a horizon line on the right side of the river and Bill’s boat floating downstream without Bill in it. We knew right away there was a nasty hydraulic/hole just over the horizon line and that Bill was trapped in it.
Ian and I paddled to an island in the middle of the river, got out of our boats and ran to the side of the island facing the hole. We immediately threw a rope to Jeff and yelled “Rope!” His eyes were opened and it seemed at first that he was responsive but it was clear quickly that he was unconscious. We knew then that someone was going to have to go in the hole and pull Jeff out. I ran back to my boat to grab a carabineer while Ian and Jason met on a rock in the middle of the river just below the Hole. I ran back and crawled across a log to the rock outcropping where Jason and Ian were preparing to send Jason into the hole. I handed Ian the carabineer and he clipped Jason to the end of a rope. Jason jumped into the water and swam upstream unto the hole. He grabbed Bill and yelled for Ian and me to pull him out. We pulled Jason out of the hole while he was holding onto Bill. When he floated by the rock Ian and I grabbed Bill and pulled him out of the water.
We patted his face and shouted to him to try and get him to respond but he was unresponsive. I started taking off his lifejacket while Ian told Jason to go get help. As soon as I got Bill’s lifejacket off Ian and I began CPR. Ian and I switched with breaths and compressions for a few minutes. After a couple minutes I n noticed that we were unable to get breaths into him anymore. I opened his mouth to examine his airway and saw that his mouth was full of water. We turned him onto his side into the recovery position to clear his airway and then continued with the CPR. The problem was that every couple of compressions his mouth would fill with water and we would have to stop to put him in the recovery position to clear his airway. To make matters worse after a few times clearing his mouth of water his mouth began to fill with vomit as well. We continued a routine of doing a couple of compressions then sweeping the vomit out of his mouth with our fingers and turning him on his side to drain the water. We continued to try and get breaths into him but his airway was still blocked by something. I stuck my fingers down his throat to try and dislodge whatever was blocking his airway, I managed to move a chunk of something out of the way enough to get a few breaths into him. We finally had a system down of Ian doing compressions and me clearing his airway and giving him breaths whenever I could manage to get his airway clear enough.
At that point we had been doing CPR for 20 minutes or so. We realized that there was little to no chance of him being alive anymore. He was cold, stiff and had no detectable pulse. We looked over to shore and I saw my mom running down to the river. She was with another woman who I didn’t recognize. As soon as the other woman saw Bill she screamed and ran towards the water. My mom had to hold her back and keep her from jumping into the river. Ian and I realized right away that the woman was Bill’s wife. We continued our routine for another 30 minutes or so until help came. Jason came back and threw a rope out to Ian and I. Ian held Bill and the rope to swing to shore where First responders from the local fire department tried unsuccessfully to revive Bill.
