Boy hurt in canoe crash

A 7-year-old boy was submerged in the Spokane River for about 20 minutes Sunday morning when the canoe he was in hit a bridge abutment near People’s Park. Three other people in the canoe – two adult men and another 7-year-old boy – were thrown from the boat and swam to safety.

Spokane Fire Department rescue teams pulled the unconscious child from the river, battalion chief Bruce Moline said. The boy, Benjamin Morin, was taken to Sacred Heart Medical Center, where he was listed in critical condition Sunday night.

The accident occurred at about 11 a.m. just west of downtown when the canoe hit one of the abutments that support the Sandifur Memorial Bridge. Benjamin was trapped underwater in the canoe, which was wrapped around the abutment.

Three people arrived soon after the accident.

“We were lost,” said Britton Thomas, 22. “Then we saw a man waving his hands. He said his son was stuck.”

Thomas and his friends, Bethany DesRosiers, 19, and Jordan Burns, 13, ran with the man to the top of the bridge. The broken canoe was directly below them.

” ‘Yeah, that’s him!’ ” Thomas said the man yelled when he spotted his son.

Burns used his cellphone to call police at 11:11 a.m.

“The little dude was just in the water the whole time,” Thomas said. “I didn’t know what to say to (the father) or what to do.”

The two adult victims escaped injury, but the other boy was taken to Deaconess Medical Center, most likely so doctors could watch for signs of hypothermia, Moline said. Firefighters’ guesses of the river temperature ranged from 40 to 65 degrees.

“Anytime you’re in the water, (hypothermia) doesn’t take long,” Spokane Fire Lt. Brian Faulkner said.

But sometimes cold water can help a victim who is submerged for a long time, as Benjamin was, Faulkner said. In extremely cold temperatures, the body moves blood to vital organs, keeping the heart and lungs going. However, that’s more likely if the person’s body temperature has had a chance to cool slowly, such as by swimming – not riding in a canoe and suddenly being submerged.

The father of the boy thrown from the canoe sat in Moline’s vehicle shortly after the incident. The four were out for a day of fun, he said.

“We certainly didn’t expect anything like that,” said the somber and shaken man who was eager to get to Deaconess to see his son.

Denny Reed, who lives in an apartment overlooking the bridge, and his girlfriend, Adrianne Marsh, heard the screams from Benjamin’s father shortly after 11 as they were doing chores.

“It wasn’t just shouting. It was an outward cry for help,” Marsh said.

Reed, an experienced climber, barreled down the steep hillside to find Benjamin’s distraught father. Marsh followed, but Reed sent her back to the apartment to retrieve his climbing gear. By the time she returned, three or four cars full of people who had been in the park had dispersed.

“The good Samaritan clause doesn’t apply to People’s Park,” Reed said with disgust.

Reed took the father’s life jacket, climbed over the bridge’s railing and scaled down to the top of the abutment. Once there, though, he couldn’t go any lower to reach the submerged canoe 10 feet below.

“If there would have been one more person here, we could have done something. But everyone split,” Reed said.

The Fire Department’s technical and water rescue teams were soon on the scene, both on the bridge and in a boat. They used ropes to pull the canoe out of the water and lowered fire equipment operator Calvin Groth to the water’s surface to retrieve the boy.

From his position, Reed shouted valuable information to the crews about the boy and the boat’s position, Faulkner said.

“He did a really good job,” Faulkner said. “We were concerned about him falling off, but he was good at relaying information from our rescuer (Groth) to the bridge” where other members of the rescue team were assembled.

The men and the boys all were wearing flotation devices and appropriate clothing, Reed said.

Reed and Marsh spent the day with Benjamin’s family at Sacred Heart. The boy’s family members told them they recently moved to Spokane from Colorado. Their 5-year-old son has a heart condition that requires him to live at a lower elevation, so they chose Spokane because of the care available at Sacred Heart.

The father also told Marsh that he’d selected the Spokane River canoeing route because a guidebook indicated that it was easy for beginners. Reed wondered if the book was written before the Sandifur Bridge was completed last October because now – with three abandoned pilings left behind by an old bridge and the new bridge’s own abutments – maneuvering through the area near People’s Park is like wiggling through a dangerous pinball machine.

“You’ve got to stay to the north side of the river to get through there,” Reed said.

The accident occurred in the same area where economic development proponents and canoe and kayaking enthusiasts plan to construct a whitewater park next summer. As envisioned, spectators would line the Sandifur Bridge watching boaters maneuver a manmade course in the river below.

Reed suggested that ladders be built on the bridge’s abutments so that when people get stuck, they can either climb up to safety or others could climb down to reach them.

“If there had been a ladder, I could have changed the situation,” he said, adding that he owns a recreation business and supports the park concept.

Steve Faust, executive director of Friends of the Falls, the organization behind the whitewater park effort, didn’t return a call for comment on the safety of the area Sunday.