Officials say Monday’s rescue on Lehigh largest in Carbon’s history

An hourslong search in the raging waters of the Lehigh River Monday night was the largest in the history of Carbon County, according to officials.

Officials spoke on Tuesday in the aftermath of the water rescue where a group of 215 females — 50 of which were in distress and had to be rescued — were rafting with the outfitter Whitewater Rafting Adventures in Nesquehoning.

Lehighton Fire Department Chief Pat Mriss said they were dispatched to a water rescue on the river in the area of the Thomas J. McCall Memorial Bridge for people stranded in a group of trees just south of the bridge.

Mriss said they began their water rescue team to those individuals, and that once they began the operation, they found out they had more people in different forms of distress along the river from that point to points south as far as the Route 895 Bridge in East Penn Township.

Initially, Mriss said they had water rescue teams from Lehighton, Franklin Township and Walnutport. He said they then received reports from Whitewater Rafting Adventures — which was the lead of the adventure for the trip — that they had more people unaccounted for, so they got in additional resources from Schuylkill, Lehigh and Northampton counties.

By the numbers

Mriss said as the night went on, they got a roster of the people on the trip, and after everyone had gotten off the river — some under there own power at different locations — the water rescue teams pulled 50 people and assisted 50 people from the river who were unable to help themselves.

He said some people were just stranded on trees, while there were also people in the water and also clinging on trees without rafts that were either overturned or lost them down the river.

After those 50 were rescued, Mriss said they also had helicopters from the Pennsylvania State Police and Fort Indian Town Gap that also scanned the river from Slatington all the way to Jim Thorpe because the adventure started in Jim Thorpe, and they had reports that people started getting into distress already in Jim Thorpe a couple hundred feet after their trip began.

He said all 215 rafters launched from the county parking lot in Jim Thorpe.

There were about 38 in the area of the McCall Bridge, eight people further down south of the river in the area of the turnpike bridges, and an additional four between the turnpike bridges and the East Penn takeout, Mriss said.

Mriss said they were unsure of the costs associated with the rescue.

“We’re in the early stages of that,” he said. “The logistics and finances, they’re not even back yet, I have to talk to all the other agencies to get their expenses as well.”

Mriss said no rescue personnel were injured, and that only one person who was on the rafting trip had to be transported to a hospital for a minor injury.

‘A lot of chaos’

Patrolman Mike Svetik of the Lehighton Police Department, who was among the law enforcement personnel on scene, said it was, “A lot of chaos when we first arrived on the scene.”

Carbon County EMA Director Mark Nalesnik said the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency at the state operations center in Harrisburg had heard about the incident going on and contacted him by phone and said they had the Helicopter Aquatic Rescue Team, a special operations team that have hoist capabilities, and they offered that to them when they heard of the situation.

“They were on missions in Columbia County rescuing people with flooding and they stopped assigning those missions and prioritized them for us, so PEMA was very proactive and offered that resource and they did come,” Nalesnik said. “They have two helicopters with hoist capability, and they did send them, and they were here on scene.”

Mriss said that by the time the helicopters did arrive, they had six boats on the water, and all the rafters in distress were accounted for or taken off the river at that time. He said at that point, they still didn’t have a total accountability as they had conflicting numbers, and they used their services just to search a larger area and to aid them in their search.

“Fortunately our rescue teams were able to make the grabs off the river of those 50 individuals that were in some type of distress before the arrival of the helicopters,” he said. “I’ve never been involved with a rescue of more than five or six people, so obviously rescuing 50 people off the river involving multiple jurisdictions is definitely the largest I believe that has ever taken place in Carbon County.

“The chief is correct in that,” Nalesnik said. “This is the largest river rescue that we’re aware of on the Lehigh River in Carbon County.”

“The issue with the state resources, the helicopters that they sent, they were able to be here, but they had a very serious concern because they were watching the radar and there were some strong cells on radar that they told me that they’ll be here as long as they can, but in the interest of safety, they would have to head back at some point because of those strong weather cells,” he said.

Out of the river

Mriss said it was about 9:45 p.m. that everyone was accounted for and the numbers matched up with the rafting company’s roster.

He said they were told that the rafting trip was supposed to take out in Lehighton behind Dunbar Bottling, but he believes only 55 out of that group actually took out, while the rest missed the takeout spot and went to points south.

Additionally, he said 109 made it out in addition to that 55 under their own power at the Bowmanstown takeout, and then the additional ones were taken out by personnel, and five additional ones already ran into problems in Jim Thorpe and were taken out early in the trip under their own power and walked down the D&L Trail.

Rescue crews

Mriss said a bystander saw the rafts bunched up and people in distress off the McCall Bridge, and that was the initial call he believes to the 911 center.

“Compliments to all the rescue crews that were involved; everybody kept calm, used their training, used their expertise,” he said. “We had shoreline rescues, we had dynamic ferry rescues, we had boat rescues, so we were using all avenues, and getting the additional manpower and water rescue teams from the additional agencies and the counties; with that many people, we needed those kind of resources.”

“From our standpoint, we’re always concerned, not only about the citizens and the people involved in the rescue, but the responders, our volunteer fire service, local emergency services, police fire and medical, they’re the backbone of the community, and these volunteers are out there to do this job, and they’re putting their own lives at risk, and our concern is constantly looking and watching for things that could put them in jeopardy,” Nalesnik said. “And so when something like this happens and they put themselves in that very dangerous environment, our concern level is heightened to the max and we’re concerned about our volunteers.”

Svetik said the Lehighton Fire Department is “second to none.”

“These guys trained very well, and they did an excellent job,” Svetik said. “It was nice to see that; these guys are just really good at what they do.”

Mriss added, “I think that the biggest thing going for us is that they were with a guided adventure, and they were meeting all their safety requirements. All the rafters did have life vests on. So, I think the biggest thing is they had the safety measures in place with the life vests, is why we were able to get out of there with only one minor injury.”

He said responders included the Lehighton and Franklin fire departments, two stations out of Whitehall as both water rescue teams supplied boats as well; water rescue task force of Northampton County, Walnutport Fire Department, Ryan Township water rescue; a total of six boats on the water and all the water rescue personnel that came with those teams.

“The biggest thing is that everybody had their life vests on,” Mriss said. “Obviously our water rescue personnel are required to wear their personal protective equipment when on or near the river as well, so those are the items that provided the safety of all the individuals involved and the reason that we came out of this pretty much with only one minor injury. Could have been a lot worse.”

“I think at some point in the command bus when word came to us that ‘we think we have everybody accounted for and they’re OK,’ the look of relief on everybody’s face in the command center, ‘like hey this sounds like it may work out to where there’s no one lost or injured,’ it took a little while to confirm that,” Nalesnik said. “But, when they finally confirmed it, it was just a big relief to all the people running this incident, and that just shows what their concern was as volunteers and other agencies involved.”