REAL LIFE
Rescue on Icicle Creek By Liz Fleming
As a Seattle firefighter who works as a fireboat engineer on a 100 ft boat on on the city's long waterfront, Brandon Freeland knows a thing or two about water. In fact, when there’s a fire to be dealt with, he’s the one in charge of pumping the thousands of gallons to fight the blaze. Most often, Brandon and his firefighting colleagues spend their days rescuing people who fall in the water, dealing with boats that sink, planes that make unintended water landings, or fires that break out on a pier or a boat.
Brandon drove the three hours to Leavenworth, and had a spectacular time paragliding with his buddies. His concern, it seemed, had been for nothing. As it was a warm day, Brandon had brought his paddleboard and when he heard that the river was flooding, he decided to add another adventure to his birthday. “It’s really fun to try to paddle up the river and see how far you can go.” Used to dealing with water of all kinds on paddleboards and in kayaks, Brandon was using an inflatable paddleboard specially designed to handle white water, with just enough room for Rojo too. The pair started their paddle up the flooded river, heading for Icicle Creek, a tributary that leads into the Wenatchee River.
That’s when I knew someone was stuck
You might think that a guy who spends so much time on and around the water would want to be anywhere else on his days off, but that wasn’t the case on Brandon’s birthday last year. He’d planned a day of paragliding with friends in the small tourist town of Leavenworth, Wash., but when he awoke that morning, Brandon had an odd sense of foreboding about the trip.
“I really wanted to fly off those cliffs above Leavenworth, but I had a funny feeling.”
Rojo, whose name is Spanish for “red” like the color of his fur, is a rescue dog Brandon found on a trip to Mexico and trained to be a FEMA (Federal Emergency Rescue Agency) dog. He goes to work with Brandon every day and is a well-behaved dog who’s devoted to his owner.
He brushed it off, reasoning that there’s always some anxiety involved with flying so high off the ground with just a tiny parachute. Loading up his gear and his dog Rojo,
“It was a really hot day, but the water in May is freezing – they call it Icicle Creek for a reason! Rojo was hot, so I let him swim, but kept my eye on him,” says Brandon. “I’d been paddling
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for a while, looking at the eddy line when I saw two girls and a guy go past me, heading right down the middle of the river on boards. They had no life jackets and that water’s 10 feet deep.” Brandon was paddling hard against the current, heading for Icicle Creek when he heard the scream. A high-pitched scream of terror. Thinking quickly, Brandon paddled away from the shore and out into the water. He looked 300 yards down the river and saw a young woman on the shore, frantically waving her arms. “He’s in the water!” she screamed. “I stared,” says Brandon, “and I saw a hand come out of the water. That’s when I knew someone was stuck.” Keeping his eyes on that hand, Brandon paddled to shore and pushed Rojo off the paddle board, hoping he’d go to the riverbank. He had to focus on the person in trouble. “I went towards the hand and as I did, I realized there was a submerged log under the water. When I looked harder, I could see there was a paddle board stuck on and under it.” But where was the paddler? Brandon hadn’t seen that hand in almost five minutes. “I was trying to go slowly while paddling against the current and trying to assess what was going on. All I’d seen was a hand in the air – and that had disappeared.” Finally, Brandon found himself going straight over the submerged paddle board with his own. He pressed himself down on his paddle board, reached below and hugged both boards together. Suddenly he understood. The paddleboarder had fallen into the water but was still hooked to the leash on his board.
