Liz Dalton

Wednesday, August 26th 2009 we responded to Knight’s Eddy, NY to help locate drowning victim HIN HON SIU, age 36, of Jamaica, New York.  He had drowned on Sunday, August 23rd. He had been rafting with three friends near the Staircase Rapids when his raft overturned and he did not resurface.  Rain has swollen the river on the 23rd making the rapids more dangerous than usual and hampering rescue efforts  for the next two days.  U.S. Parks Department Officers called me late Tuesday morning and we made arrangements for the next day.

Wednesday was the first day that the river was calm enough to search effectively with divers. The dogs were tasked to search just below the point last seen. If  they could pinpoint an area, they could reduce the amount of river bottom that divers needed to search.  Three teams from Eagle Valley were deployed: Findling and Stryder, Pardini and Suki, Warren and Quax. A fourth team was deployed from Ramapo Search and Rescue Dogs.  All four teams completed their assignments and reported the dogs were alerting in a single area just below the point last seen (PLS).  Divers were sent to search that area.

Meanwhile, I put together a second round of assignments. The trickiest part of searching the river is getting the dogs and boats to the places that need to be searched.  I enlisted the help of a Pennsylvania  Environmental Conservation Officer whose name I can’t remember who has lived his entire life in the area and knew every road, trail and boat landing.

Amir Findling came prepared with a complete set of maps for the river from the point where the boat capsized down to Port Jervis.  We both thought it likely that the body had already resurfaced and traveled beyond where the main search effort was focused.  After sinking to the bottom for a period of time, drowning victims resurface.  When they resurface depends upon several factors including the water temperature.  The warmer the water, the sooner the victim surfaces. We were looking at a three day interval in August.  If the body hadn’t become stuck, wedged in between rocks or debris, it very likely had already surfaced.

We planned to search at least 6 miles from the point last seen. This was both our experience with fast moving water, and was also indicated in Bob Koester’s Lost Person Behavior. 95% of drowning victims on rivers were located within 8 miles of the pls.  If I had had more dogs, I would have extended the search area out the full 8 miles. We had three other dogs teams that hadn’t been deployed yet, me and Ripley, Katie Danzig and Scout, and Dick Szczesh and K-9 Buddy from Amigo Search and Rescue Dogs.  The three teams that had been out in the morning were also ready for a second assignment.  The plan was to search high probability areas–places where a floating body might get stuck on shore or in strainers along the river bank.

Just as we were getting ready to deploy the second round, a kayaking found him washed up on shore.  He was found where we planned to deploy one of our teams–5.6 mile from the PLS, near an access point my guide had identified.  I was glad the victim had been found. Diving is always dangerous.  Having recently completed a course in lost person behavior, I was also gratified that we’d come up with a good plan.

What about the dogs who alerted earlier near the point last seen?  Divers recovered a shoe positively identified as belonging to the victim exactly where the Ramapo dog indicated.  Most likely the dogs were alerting on the shoe and possibly other items belonging to the subject.  It is also likely they were alerting on the residual scent left by victim who had been in that spot for at least a day, probably two.  Its likely he was under the water Monday and most of Tuesday.  Once he had surfaced the journey downstream would not have taken long.   His final location was out in the open, clearly visible to any river traffic.  I had been on the shore since early that morning. There was no recreational traffic early in the morning.  The first rafters started passing our location at Knights Eddy just an hour or so before he was located. The victim was probably seen by the very first kyacker that went past him that day.

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