6 minute read
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. 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 paddle- board 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.
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.
You might think that That’s when I a guy who spends so knew someone much time on and around the was stuck 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.”
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, Brandon drove the three hours to Leavenworth, and had a spectacular time paragliding with his buddies. His concern, it seemed, had been for nothing.
“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 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.
“I pulled so hard on that leash,” Brandon says, “but it was jammed tight against the board. Then I realized that it was wrapped around the log, pointing upriver, but the boarder was downriver, trapped under water. I knew I had to unhook that leash, so I yanked as hard as I could. There was a guy out there, drowning but I couldn’t get my fingers under the leash and both boards were going under.”
Despite the freezing temperature, Brandon submerged his head as he struggled to break the leash.
“I knew I couldn’t let go of the boards or I’d be swept away and would never be able to help him.” Time stood still. Incredibly, witnesses on the shore later said they believed the paddleboarder had been submerged for more than 15 minutes before he was released.
Brandon struggled frantically to break the paddleboard leash until suddenly, it gave way.
“Then I saw the back of his head come up. But his face was straight down in the water.“
Brandon was surprised to find that he’d been lying on top of his paddle without realizing it – a huge stroke of luck that allowed him to paddle quickly to the victim.
Just then, the victim’s girlfriend, anxious to help, paddled into Brandon’s board, knocking both him and the man he’d just rescued back into the water.
“I don’t even remember getting the two of us back on that board,” says Brandon. “I just knew I had to get him to breathe.”
Sending the girlfriend back to the shore to look after the faithful Rojo who’d also swum out to help, Brandon began compressions on the victim’s ribcage. Shockingly, despite being submerged for so long, he began to cough water and took a few breaths.
“I thought ‘Oh my God, he’s breathing!’ I could hardly believe it,” says Brandon. As he worked on the victim, Brandon called to a group of tourists on the shore, instructing them to have EMT services sent to the Leavenworth boat ramp.
“When I finally paddled over and pulled him up on the boat ramp,” says Brandon, “he sat up on the paddleboard and started to breathe normally.”
When the sheriff arrived, he had trouble believing what had happened. Brandon quickly explained that he was a firefighter and that, while the victim seemed to be breathing and doing well, they’d better keep the ambulance coming.
In the end, the victim was taken to hospital where he experienced a complete recovery and was released four hours later. A few days later, the girlfriend’s mother reached out to offer her thanks in the form of a substantial gift card for a local pet store. Rojo, the faithful FEMA dog, got a nice warm jacket and some toys and Brandon had the satisfaction of knowing that he’d saved another life on the Wenatchee River – his third! But we’ll have to save the tales of his other two rescues for some future issue of CRACKYL.
