Crews prepare to pull body from river

Emergency personnel were preparing to retrieve a body from the swift-flowing Spokane River this afternoon. A pedestrian spotted the body at People’s Park around 2:30 p.m. It was tangled in the underbrush near the bank and appeared to have been in the river for a while, said Joe Fielder, Spokane Fire Department battalion chief. The fire department’s swift water rescue team had been training nearby when the call came in, Fielder said. The Spokane County Sheriff’s Department dive team was also at the scene. The river was running at 23,000 cubic feet per second, which complicated efforts to retrieve the body, Fielder said.