Woman drowned during Hudson River rafting trip

witch hobble wrote

Those of you who have not rafted the gorge but are tempted, PLEASE do not let this incident discourage you from enjoying this very cool and special part of the Adirondacks.

+1

As I said in a previous post, I did this trip for the first time this past April with a bunch of friends, and a different rafting company. We had a great day, and really enjoyed the trip. We would definitely do it again.

witch hobble wrote

this is the result of the poor choice made to put a first year guide on a solo trip on the gorge.  Sorry to have to say it.  But if that is what happened, it was inexcusable.

That is, in fact, the situation. I'm pretty sure Beaver Brook and Whitewater Challengers both had one boat go out that day as well, but they were probably past the Indian Head well after HRRC even put in.

witch hobble wrote

Those of you who have not rafted the gorge but are tempted, PLEASE do not let this incident discourage you from enjoying this very cool and special part of the Adirondacks.

 +3!

I've been stressing the bad stuff to much. They're not all terrible!

witch hobble wrote

 Those of you who have not rafted the gorge but are tempted, PLEASE do not let this incident discourage you from enjoying this very cool and special part of the Adirondacks.

Ditto. My inaugural gorge trip (with North Creek Rafting Co.) was fantastic.

he said she said...

wrote

I guess *** said he blew a 2.0
he had a empty flask and a nalgene with liquor in it

For those following this story, there's this non-development in today's Post-Star:

INDIAN LAKE -- State Police said Tuesday they may never know the full sequence of events that led to the drowning death last week of a woman on a white-water rafting trip.

Investigators believe Tamara F. Blake, 53, of Columbus, Ohio, could swim, and she was wearing a life jacket, wet suit and helmet during the fatal trip down the Indian and Hudson rivers.

State Police Senior Investigator Robert Lawyer said the investigation into the Thursday morning accident on the Indian River was continuing as of Tuesday. But police may never know why she drowned despite wearing a personal flotation device.

Blake; her boyfriend, Richard J. Clar, 53, of Columbus, Ohio; and guide Rory K. Fay, 37, of North Creek, were the only three occupants on the raft when Blake and Fay were thrown from it.

Clar steered the boat to shore and Fay swam to shore, but Blake was swept downstream.

Lawyer said police believe Blake was able to swim.

“He (Clar) did not indicate she had a problem with water prior to this,” Lawyer said.

Police said Blake was in whitewater when she was tossed from the boat. She was ejected at a point in the Indian River just upstream of its confluence with the Hudson, and her body was recovered 5 miles downstream in the Hudson.

Lawyer would not release the details of what occurred in the moments before Blake and Fay were thrown from the raft.

“We’re not going to get into the particulars at this time,” he said.

An autopsy performed Friday confirmed that Blake drowned.

Police believe Fay was intoxicated at the time of the trip, but there were no indications Blake or Clar had been drinking.

Fay was charged with criminally negligent homicide and remained in Hamilton County Jail for lack of bail on Tuesday.

Fay was a first-year guide for Hudson River Rafting Co. The company’s owner, Patrick Cunningham, said Fay passed the state whitewater rafting guide test, and had taken at least 20 trips down the river.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which licenses guides, acknowledged that Fay did have an active license.

A guide’s license can be stripped if he is convicted of an Environmental Conservation law or regulations violation, DEC spokeswoman Lori Severino said.

Cunningham did not return a phone call for comment Tuesday. He said Friday he did not know the circumstances of the fatal accident.

Cunningham is currently under indictment in Hamilton County for misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges related to two other ill-fated trips that rafters took with his employees in 2010.

Those rafters were not seriously injured, but some were allegedly sent down the river in an unguided boat, while another group was abandoned in a remote area.

Link to Post-Star story:  Police don’t know how woman with life jacket drowned during rafting trip

Also, from the Adirondack Almanack, news that the 2010 reckless endangerment charges against Cunningham may be reinstated.  The reinstatement of those charges is not directly related to last Thursday's drowning, but rather to additional violations by Cunningham earlier this summer:
DA Seeks To Reinstate Charges Against Cunningham

Police clearly underestimate the power of water if they don't understand how she can drown with a life jacket on.
About half way down the Gooley Steps, you have Guide's hole which could have bucked them out pretty easily if it wasn't hit properly. Just downstream from that there is a pretty nasty hole directly in the center of the river . Immediately after that, there is a few really sticky holes on river right (which I guess is where the "steps" actually begin). The last of them is probably the worst and could EASILY hold a person in there long enough to drown, regardless of how much flotation their PFD provided.

This is actually the exact reason why they're called PFDs (personal flotation device) and not a life jacket. It's not promised to save your life. Similar to changing "guard rails" to "guide rails" on the sides of highways.

Hi, Ted,
I'm sure the State Police are very aware of the hazards of moving water to a person falling out of a craft, even with a PFD.  The autopsy results stated in this news article said only that the cause of death was drowning.  Drownings in these circumstances could be from a number of possible causes. The newspaper report cited only said the police were unable to determine a specific cause of the drowning despite wearing a PFD.  This may end up being categorized as a "flush drowning", which results from a long swim, exhaustion and water aspiration.

Guided rafting is relatively safe compared to many other recreational activities. A study from 5 years ago said there was one rafting death per quarter-million passenger trips. Private rafting fatality rates are much higher.

The American Whitewater Affiliation (AWA) has been a leader in accident analysis and safety education for nearly 60 years. They also compile a database of accidents and close calls as part of developing best practices for risk management in whitewater sports.  

Using the AWA database, I searched for rafting fatalities and came up with the following results which are a little hair-raising, but interesting to read.
AWA Rafting Incident Reports

Another article by the Post Star -

http://poststar.com/news/local/article_9f814b12-0e9e-11e2-8b0f-001a4bcf887a.html

Not really any new information in there, though.
There is a mention of HRRC being kicked off the Sacandaga river, with a few false facts. One being that you need to be licensed to run the Sacandaga, which isn't true, and the second being that HRRC has booked trips on the Sac and then taken them to the Hudson instead. There have been quite a few days in the past two years where he has trips go down the Sac, and he makes the crew carry the boat about 1/4 mile down the public put in. The public put in is owned by Brookfield Power and is illegal for commercial use.

Some statistics from the river:

The Post Star wrote

Last week’s death was the first of a white water rafter on the Hudson River since 1994. There were several deaths on the river in the early 1990s, which, outfitters said, occurred among passengers of a company from Pennsylvania that tried to make inroads on the Hudson but no longer does business locally.

Rafferty said an estimated 25,000 rafters go down the Hudson each season with very few injuries because the vast majority of outfitters are exceedingly safety conscious.

“This is certainly an anomaly. If you look at the record, it speaks for itself,” he said.

Michaeltokyo wrote

Hi, Ted,
I'm sure the State Police are very aware of the hazards of moving water to a person falling out of a craft, even with a PFD.  The autopsy results stated in this news article said only that the cause of death was drowning.  Drownings in these circumstances could be from a number of possible causes. The newspaper report cited only said the police were unable to determine a specific cause of the drowning despite wearing a PFD.  This may end up being categorized as a "flush drowning", which results from a long swim, exhaustion and water aspiration.

Got it.

From the Post-Star:

A state Supreme Court justice on Thursday ordered that Hudson River Rafting Co. halt whitewater rafting operations as the state Attorney General’s Office investigates its operations.

Justice Richard Giardino directed that the North Creek outfitter stop rafting while a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General’s Office proceeds through court. The lawsuit alleges the company committed “statutory fraud,” violated numerous state laws and regulations and falsely advertised its services.

The company repeatedly sent rafts down the Hudson and Indian rivers without licensed guides and had unlicensed drivers operating buses that took passengers to the river, according to the lawsuit.

“Consumers have been injured by respondents’ repeated illegal and unsafe provision of guided rafting excursions on the subject rivers, and in a recent incident, a consumer was killed,” Assistant Attorney General G. Nicholas Garin wrote.

The state Attorney General’s Office sought a temporary injunction that would bar the company from offering whitewater rafting. Giardino did not sign the order but instead orally ordered the company to halt rafting and scheduled a hearing on the issue for an unspecified day next week, according to Giardino’s clerk.

The rafting season ended last weekend for most if not all of the companies that use the Indian and Hudson rivers.

The Attorney General’s Office had acknowledged last week it was investigating the company, after a raft passenger drowned last month and following recent prosecutions of Hudson River Rafting Co. owner Patrick Cunningham.

A spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s Office acknowledged late Thursday the office had gone to court to seek a temporary restraining order against Hudson River Rafting Co., but said she could not provide further details.

Cunningham did not return a phone call for comment, and his lawyer, Jason Britt, said Thursday he had no comment on the matter.

The court action against the company comes two weeks after a patron drowned during a whitewater rafting trip on the Indian and Hudson rivers, and a guide was charged with criminally negligent homicide for allegedly guiding the boat while intoxicated.

The woman who drowned, Tamara F. Blake, 53, of Ohio, was thrown from the raft, as was guide Rory K. Fay, 37, of North Creek. The other passenger, Blake’s boyfriend, Richard J. Clar, 53, also of Ohio, was not thrown from the raft.

Cunningham was in Hamilton County Court on Wednesday as the Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office sought to reopen misdemeanor reckless endangerment charges against him.

The charges, which accuse him of endangering passengers during two rafting trips in 2010, were adjourned in contemplation of dismissal if Cunningham followed certain conditions in his operation.

District Attorney Marsha Purdue has accused Cunningham of violating the deal by sending a raft on a portion of a trip without a guide in May. The guide exited the raft during a trip and had passengers travel the final several miles unguided, she said.

Purdue said Judge S. Peter Feldstein scheduled a hearing for Nov. 20 to determine whether Cunningham violated the agreement. If it is found that he did, he could face trial on the misdemeanor charges and a potential jail sentence of up to a year on each charge.

The criminally negligent homicide charge remains pending against Fay, who was being held in Hamilton County Jail. Purdue said the investigation of that aspect of the case is continuing.

Link to Post-Star:  In wake of drowning, court orders company to stop rafting trips

Just a side note:  I've been posting the full text of Post-Star articles here since the PS moved it's online edition behind a paywall last year (IMO wrong strategy for a newspaper).  You can read something like 10 free articles per month before the paywall kicks in.  So the link will work for most readers here, but not all.

This is mind blowing:

http://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2012/10/one-mans-experience-with-hudson-river-rafting-company.html

not defending the rafting company and i don't know the level of difficulty of the section of river,  but the only thing that blows my mind there is the writers ineptitude and lack of judgement - go to an amusement park next time!

That's really not fair. He trusted the pros to get him through this experience safely, and they failed spectacularly. His problem was that he was a total babe in the woods, it seems, with no rafting or river experience at all. A little bit of knowledge would have prevented him from embarking on this near fatal experience.
Read the links from Trip Advisor I posted on the first page. Amazing this company stayed in business long enough to drown a woman.

gorgonzola wrote

not defending the rafting company and i don't know the level of difficulty of the section of river,  but the only thing that blows my mind there is the writers ineptitude and lack of judgement - go to an amusement park next time!

I was thinking the same thing

benny - AGAIN, NOT DEFENDING THE RAFTING COMPANY. It's implied in the article that they were not supposed to be sending down unguided boats at all, the risks of outdoor adventure can be great and for any company to ignore them or take them lightly for their patrons in inexcusable. but people have to rely on their own good judgement as well. my comments were relative to harvey's posted article only - they should have assessed the risk based on their experience and walked away. not that i'm  some super riverman, but what i took away was that if someone couldn't navigate a ducky on low water levels they had no business being out there and probably should have realized it themselves as well. if you do decide to go for it than some risks are assumed - theyre ordeal sounded to me like a reasonable outcome and i didn't think life threatening at all. if you telling me it was class III that day than that's a totally different story.

campgottagopee wrote

gorgonzola wrote

not defending the rafting company and i don't know the level of difficulty of the section of river,  but the only thing that blows my mind there is the writers ineptitude and lack of judgement - go to an amusement park next time!

I was thinking the same thing

While I'd agree that it sounds like these guys were pretty inept, it doesn't change the fact that they paid for a "guided" trip and, therefore, the guides should ultimately have been responsible for making sure that these guys were OK. If they saw at the start of the trip that these guys were as inept as they apparently were, they should have either stopped the trip immediately, or at least made sure that they were keeping a closer eye on them.

On every guided rafting trip I've been on, there's ALWAYS been one boat with a guide, or a guide in a kayak, following behind EVERYBODY else, just to make sure no one gets left behind. That seems like a pretty common-sense practice to me.

Face4Me wrote

campgottagopee wrote

gorgonzola wrote

not defending the rafting company and i don't know the level of difficulty of the section of river,  but the only thing that blows my mind there is the writers ineptitude and lack of judgement - go to an amusement park next time!

I was thinking the same thing

While I'd agree that it sounds like these guys were pretty inept, it doesn't change the fact that they paid for a "guided" trip and, therefore, the guides should ultimately have been responsible for making sure that these guys were OK. If they saw at the start of the trip that these guys were as inept as they apparently were, they should have either stopped the trip immediately, or at least made sure that they were keeping a closer eye on them.

On every guided rafting trip I've been on, there's ALWAYS been one boat with a guide, or a guide in a kayak, following behind EVERYBODY else, just to make sure no one gets left behind. That seems like a pretty common-sense practice to me.

Don't disagree at all. My only thought was after the first time they lost control and flipped maybe they should've turned back---would've been a 5 minute walk vs. 3.5 hrs.

gorgonzola wrote

benny - AGAIN, NOT DEFENDING THE RAFTING COMPANY. It's implied in the article that they were not supposed to be sending down unguided boats at all, the risks of outdoor adventure can be great and for any company to ignore them or take them lightly for their patrons in inexcusable. but people have to rely on their own good judgement as well. my comments were relative to harvey's posted article only - they should have assessed the risk based on their experience and walked away. not that i'm  some super riverman, but what i took away was that if someone couldn't navigate a ducky on low water levels they had no business being out there and probably should have realized it themselves as well. if you do decide to go for it than some risks are assumed - theyre ordeal sounded to me like a reasonable outcome and i didn't think life threatening at all. if you telling me it was class III that day than that's a totally different story.

I COMPLETELY agree with you regarding personal responsibility, but unfortunately, some people are just THAT stupid. Had these guys simply rented a boat, kayak, ducky, whatever, then I'd agree completely, that it's entirely their fault. But since they were supposed to be guided, it's the guide's responsibility to assess the situation and act accordingly.

The assumed risks are, that I may fall out of the boat and get hurt, or even drown, not that I'm going to be left behind by my guide, or in the case of the Ohio woman, not that I'm going to be guided by a guide who is intoxicated, and therefore his judgment and/or ability may be impaired.

^definatley, but i thought the guided tour was full (too full i guess for the water level) and they agreed to take the ducky without a guide

I don't know. The only raft trip I have ever been on was 14 days down the Grand Canyon. I knew that there were risks, of course, but the company told me that safety was #1, and it sure seemed to be, in that case, especially since I told them I can't swim too well. What did I know beforehand to access risk? As a novice, you put all faith in the guides. If they told me some action was safe, well, how could I argue?
I was real happy they had us walk around Crystal rapids, btw. I left my manhood back in the raft when I saw that one.

fortunately my guided/self guided raft and kayak trips (lehigh, deleware, ottawa, gauley) have been with excellent outfitters with support boats as f4m metions. i do remember the guide on one of the ottawa trips telling us if you got tossed and seperated  which bank to swim too and to walk out to the road and wait - on the other side he said there wasn't a whole lot between the river and the north pole