On Sunday 062704 the pager went off at 1946 hours. The message, Dive team call out missing 14yoa male at Beaver Bay swim area, Farragut state Park.
I was out the door and en-route at 1947.
The trip consisted of all 2-lane roads with heavy traffic due to the Ironman going on. Most of the traffic was cooperative with just a couple of jerks that didnt know what the red and blue lights were for. They will receive tickets by mail.
At 2000 hours Im about a mile out, after covering the 22 miles from home, when the Sgt. who is team member, calls for medical to expedite. That could only mean one thing and it isnt good.
I get on scene, grab my Laerdal CPR Pocket-Mask and run the 200 yards to the actual scene on the beach. The Sgt. and one of the shift deputies are just positioning the boys body on the shore to begin CPR. The Sgt. had seen the submerged boy from the top of the hill in the clear waters of the swim area. He ran down the hill and dove in without removing any of his 40+ pounds of duty gear and recovered the boy.
I took the breaths position while the Sgt. did compressions. I used the shift deputy to hold an open airway as I was having trouble keeping a seal with the mask. His vomiting made things slippery but with two of us we got a good seal and kept the air in his lungs.
It was around12 minutes later when Medical and Fire arrived and took over CPR. They worked on the boy for over an hour. The chopper had landed on the other side of the swim area and the flight crew assisted working on him for roughly another hour. During this time Im with the Grandparents, Parents and two sisters, 4 and 12.
We learned that they had been out tubing all day and had beached the boat at the swim area for a rest. The 12-year-old sister wanted to go swimming with her brother but he said he didnt want to. The last time anyone saw him was going to the restrooms on top of the hill about a hundred yards away.
The closest time frame we can get is he was submerged somewhere around two plus hours.
This is going to be very hard on the family as they are life long residence of the area and live close to the accident scene.
I will do a follow up dive at 0600 hours. I will be doing a scene search to see what can be found if anything.
I looked that boy directly in the face for 10-12 minutes and I cant tell you what color his hair is and even if my life depended on it I could not describe him. I guess the safety valve is working.
This job still sucks.
Here is the location of the swim area. It is the light colored water protected on three sides.
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?t=1&s=11&x=1330&y=13277&z=11&w=1
You can zoom out and see the entire 94,000 acre lake.
Gary D.