Four people rescued from sinking boat at Woodward Reservoir
A family of four people, including a child and a grandchild, had to be rescued at Woodward Reservoir on Tuesday afternoon when their boat began to sink.
The incident occurred just after noon near the dam on the northwest side of the reservoir.
The family was out fishing when a mechanical problem caused the boat to take on water, said Stanislaus Consolidated Fire Protection District Battalion Chief Rick Bussell.
There were a man and a woman on board with an 11-year-old boy and a teenage girl, but they had only three life jackets. The man went without. Bussell said the 11-year-old doesn’t know how to swim.
“That water is freezing and it won’t take long before hypothermia sets in,” he said. “They were close to the dam, which is the deepest part of the lake.”
There happened to be three off-duty Stanislaus Consolidated firefighters on the lake to take down their duck blind when the call came out and they saw their fellow firefighters arrive on shore.
Bussell said the off-duty firefighters, all members of the department’s swift water rescue team, rode to the shore in their aluminum fishing boat to find out what was happening, then went to find the sinking boat.
They reached the boat — which was half full of water — around the same time as sheriff’s deputies.
The off-duty firefighters took the two children and the woman on board their aluminum boat, while the man got on the Sheriff’s Department boat and assisted in towing his sinking boat back to shore.
They all arrived safely on shore around 12:30 p.m.
This story was originally published February 19, 2019 at 1:36 PM.
