Monday, June 29, 2015

1 MAN DEAD, 7 RESCUED IN BOATING ACCIDENT INVOLVING TWO BOATS ON JAMES RIVER. NONE OF THE PASSENGERS WERE WEARING LIFE JACKETS.









JUNE 29, 2015

BUCHANAN, VA. (AP)

According to Botetourt Fire and EMS Deputy Chief Jason Ferguson, two boats floating down the James River at the Quarry Rapids, were involved in an accident that caused one of the boats to capsize.  Rescuers had everyone accounted for within an hour of arrival.

The James River as seen today from @BCFireEMS boat while rescuing people from a capsized boat. (h/t Jason Ferguson) pic.twitter.com/WuxTRfLnl0
— Shayne Dwyer (@ShayneDwyerWDBJ) June 29, 2015

A 51-year-old man was found dead underwater at the scene close to where the boat overturned after the Botetourt Special Operations & Tactics Team launched search and rescue boats into the water. The man's body has been taken to the Medical Examiner in Roanoke, and at this point authorities believe he died from drowning.

The man's daughter, Jessica Long, identified him as Benajmin Neal Long Sr., of Huddleston, and said he went by Neal Long. She said her father, Neal, loved the outdoors, floating the river, and that her family is very into the outdoors.

Jessica Long said she took this photo of her father 4 minutes b4 she called 911 after boat flipped and he went under. pic.twitter.com/jI6Fy8p6Br
— Shayne Dwyer (@ShayneDwyerWDBJ) June 29, 2015

Seven other people were rescued from the shore and from an island in the middle of the river, including Jessica, other family members, and her fiancé.
Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries Senior Conservation Police Officer John Koloda said no one that was on board was wearing a life jacket, which he said "seems to be the case all the time when there is a drowning."

Koloda said a wearable life jacket is required by Virginia law for each person on board, but the law does not mandate that the life jacket must be worn.

He said according to people on the boat, the man killed was sitting on a "Type IV throwable device" that is required by law on all motor boats when the boat hit the rapids. Koloda said it's a square shaped cushion that floats and that is generally thrown from a boat to someone who needs it.

According to Koloda, people on the boat said when the boat flipped that floatation device got caught on a nearby tree. Investigators have not been able to recover it yet.

Ferguson said the Jon Boat with a metal bottom capsized after it went through a stretch of rapids that he believed was a Class 2 stretch of rapids in typical conditions. Boaters typically classify rapids in one of five classes, with Class 1 being the least intense and Class 5 the most.

The first boat was able to make it through the rapids. Officials are determining what happened to the second boat, which has not been recovered yet. Koloda said there was a large tree or log stump wedged between rocks in a kind of dangerous area, and that high water levels create an even more intense and dangerous situation.

"The boat actually went under the limb (of the stump) and the bow went down into the water and ejected the passengers," Koloda said "The boat got lodged in that, ejected the passengers, and that's when everything went south."

Jessica Long said the group including her siblings and family members started the trip in the Springwood area and floated down to Buchanan, where they originally planned to stop the trip.

According to Long, her group started talking to another group at the boat launch about how much fun they'd had on the trip, when someone from the other group suggested the best part of the river to float is the section from Buchanan to Arcadia.

"We had camped in Arcadia and boated there, never made that float though" Jessica Long said in a phone interview. "It wasn't very late in the day when we finished from Springwood to Buchanan and figured we had extra time to float down a little farther."

Jessica Long was in the boat with her father and others when they started experiencing trouble, not far from where they re-launched.

"We saw the water was picking up once we were making it into the rapids, the currant turned the boat sideways," Jessica Long said. "While we were trying to straighten the boat we hit a log and water started rushing in the back of the boat and it started sinking."

Jessica Long said the boat ended up standing on its end, pinning her brother between the boat and the log, while throwing her brother's girlfriend into the water. She said her dad's floatation device got snagged on the log and he couldn't hold onto it when the water drug him down the river.

"My fiancé jumped in and tried to save my dad," Jessica Long recalled. "They just couldn't get to him, he came up once and then he just disappeared."

She took a photo of her father at 1:55 p.m., the last photo she'd ever take of him, and then called 911 at 1:59 p.m., four minutes later.

"I'm glad I have the photo of my dad, he was just a great person," Jessica Long said. "I can sit and look at that photo and remember how much of a good time we had before that happened."

The river as of Sunday morning was up significantly higher than normal, moving very swiftly, and was extremely muddy according to Ferguson. He said the water in the area is normally around 3 feet deep, but because of recent rain, the water is about ten feet deep according to the NOAA.

James River was 7.66 ft above normal level and falling just hours before boat capsized & 1 person died accd2 @NOAA pic.twitter.com/8TKpSEbGnN
— Shayne Dwyer (@ShayneDwyerWDBJ) June 29, 2015
Source: http://www.wdbj7.com