Rescue on swimmer in Washing Machine, Big South Fork of Cumberland River

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• published: 04 Mar 2015
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Flow was at around 1850 CFS at the Big South Fork of Cumberland River in Tennessee, ran on Saturday, Feb 28th, 2015. Air temperature was at around 40 degrees and water at around 35. I turned on the camera only about a minute into her swim in the hydraulic, not knowing what was happening, I only realized how severe the situation was as I drifted to the rock and saw a red helmet bobbing in the water. That was the first time any of us ever attempted to pull someone out of a hydraulic like that, and our rescue was far from ideal. Throwing rope from an upstream position was a bad idea, none the less, we didn't really have much choice. My thought process at the time was to rope her out, but I realized that I'm was not able to pull her out for where I was standing, I had to jump in to the water to get into a downstream position. I waited to make sure that someone was there so I won't get suck into the hydraulic myself and jump in. My friend who was attempting a live-bait rescue grabbed onto the rope after I jumped over and pulled her out. The swimmer is completely fine with no trauma other than she suffered from moderate hypothermia that required about 45 mins on the field to warm up, and was suffering from Acute Stress Reaction for the first hour after being pulled out of the bad situation. It was a humbling experience for all of us and we had to reevaluate our rescue strategy after. Here's the footage from the perspective of the swimmer: http://youtu.be/aDDgOnDuDAE Updated Commentary 3/5/2015: A few of us have taken SWR training quite recently. It wasn't the lack of knowledge on SWR but the lack of experience and practice that was the main reason to our inefficiency on the rescue. More on that factor of the lack of communication, I did not realize what was happening as swims happen all the time and I did not expect a swim this bad until I was starring at her (the swimmer in the hole). I decided to not grab my rope at first thinking my paddle would reach but obviously it did not. So I went back and took the rope. At the same time, I did not want to miss the throw so I tried to get the swimmer's attention and waited for her to get into a better position to get the rope. After throwing the rope and her catching it, I tried pulling her onto the rock but I realized that it was too heavy and I would not be able to pull her up the rock by myself, since I was also in a upstream position and very close to the sticky hole. So I yelled at my buddies down stream saying "I'm gonna jump over, grab me!" but according to them after, they couldn't hear a thing I was yelling, in the mean time, they were preparing for a live-bait rescue. The rescuer that jumped in at first were very close to pulling her out, missed her by less than a foot before she got sucked back into the hydraulic. I waited for him to jump in before I jump over so we could pull her out from a downstream angle because for one, I was worried about getting sucked into the hydraulic myself. The take-away we had from this was we needed better communication and more proficient rope throws. The rest of it, including shortening the rescue time could only come with experience. Again, it was not the lack of rescue knowledge, but a lack of practice and experience. Knowing what we needed to improve our rescue skills, this incident have made us reevaluate our strategies on educating SWR and safety, and hence, we have started a 30-minute SWR and safety training/simulation session held twice a week, where we will be practicing rope throw, communication, and setting up rescue simulations in an indoor pool. (Due to location constraints, we do not have frequent access to any actual swiftwater.)