The Anchorage Fire Department Engineer Corey Roberts
finishes making a cut in a sweeper as Paramedic Craig Paulus holds onto the
victim during a swiftwater rescue on Eagle River on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 16,
2012. They freed the paddler who was trapped in a kayak that was pinned under a
fallen tree by the rain swollen glacial fed river.
It's good to see all the training payoff for Eagle River Fire Department. SAS Water Safety taught several courses for both Eagle Rive and Anchorage FD in the 90's.
Clutching to a paddle that he had somehow jammed into debris
beneath the frigid, rushing water, pinned and unable to free himself from his
submerged kayak, Steve Rossberg wondered if anyone could hear the distress
calls from his police whistle. After 90 minutes in the icy water, body numb, he
could feel his will to survive ebbing. Then, with his head barely above water,
he thought he saw someone on shore making a cell phone call. “I’ve got to hang
on,” he thought. “I’ve got to hang on.”
These were some of the thoughts racing through Rossberg’s
mind Sept. 16 after his kayak became lodged in a sweeper along the lower
portion of Eagle River. He was experienced on Alaska’s rivers and had good
equipment. But as he struggled to remain conscious and keep his focus, he was
haunted by a single thought: “I underestimated the river.”
An avid outdoorsman, Rossberg was kayaking a three-mile
stretch of Eagle River Sunday afternoon between the Hiland and Glenn Highway
bridges. The river is tame in comparison to some of the other rivers he has
run. He thought paddling the river alone would be no problem. He was wrong.
This year’s high water has brought considerable debris down the river which
only weeks ago was responsible for the death of two female canoeists.
At about one quarter mile from his pull out point at the
Eagle River Campground, he made a critical error by paddling underneath a tree
that was arching over the water. His kayak became stuck under a large log and
he ended up pinned.
“There are two critical decisions that were wrong,” Rossberg
says. “One was kayaking alone and two was going under that arched tree. It is
good to have another person there to help with judging things — to bounce
things off of. If I was with my paddle buddy, I probably would not have gone
under that tree.”
He tried a number of things to free himself, including
cutting himself out of the kayak with a knife, but finally resigned himself to
the fact that he was not going to be able to get loose.
“I reached a point where I realized I needed to focus on the
task at hand,” he says. “Conserve my energy, keep my head above water, breathe
and blow my whistle.”
Initially he could see his kayak — it was about two inches
under water. As time ticked on, the water pressure pulled it down and he was
soon submerged up to his neck. He was in the water for 90 minutes, bracing
himself with his paddle and blowing his whistle and losing strength. Then he
saw something on shore. “The image is burned in my head,” Rossberg recalls. “I
saw a guy in a blue coat and he was on a white phone making a call.”
A wave of hope washed over him. Maybe help was on the way.
And it was. The caller reached 911 and the dispatcher
quickly contacted Eagle River’s Ladder 11, a branch of the Anchorage Fire
Department. Responders immediately sprang into action, launched a boat from the
campground and in minutes went upstream to the site. By the time they reached
Rossberg, hypothermia had set in. They needed to get him out of the water
within minutes. The rescue team had to take a chainsaw to the large tree to
free him. By the time the responders pulled him out of the water it had been
two hours since he had been pinned and his core body temperature had fallen to
90 degrees. He was quickly evacuated to an Anchorage hospital and has since
made a full recovery.
Rossberg is a drilling manager for BP Alaska. Humbled by the
experience, he recently held a town hall meeting at the company’s Anchorage
office to explain the incident to employees and to properly thank the rescue
team. He expressed his deep gratitude to the men, more than a dozen in all, who
responded and saved his life in perilous conditions.
Following a discussion of the incident by the Ladder 11
team, one of the rescuers, Corey Roberts, said to Rossberg: “I don’t know if
you knew at the time how close you were to dying, but I think you do now.”
Rossberg’s message to his co-workers was clear: “Learn from
my mistakes.
“Don’t underestimate the risk. Prepare for the worst. Ask
yourself do you have the right equipment, are you mentally and physically
capable of surviving the worst case scenario?”
Rossberg said the rescuers’ high degree of training, their
quick response, his training in the military, his remaining focused at the task
at hand, having proper gear (he wore a dry suit with two layers underneath)
having a bright green helmet and a two dollar whistle are what saved his life.
When asked if he will go kayaking again, he replied: “The
doctor told me I’ve been sidelined for 10 days. When I do go back out, it won’t
be alone.”
