From Martin Breu:
** There was a commercial rafting fatality on the Rouge river in Quebec on Sunday. A 29yo woman fell out of the raft and never resurfaced. Search and rescue operations are under way, she has not yet been located.
**As far as I have heard from guides who work on the Rouge the victim fell out just before the Washing Machine, a hole that is well known and that is regularly run by boaters. The victim got swept into the hole and apparently never resurfaced. This hole has seen thousands of swimmers since folks started paddling the Rouge, his is the first apparent entrapment there. I have swam in there several times myself. Commercial rafters surf the hole and flip there on a regular basis. This incident didn't happen during a surf or a flip, the raft was upright, just the victim that fell out. This is a very challenging spot to do a recovery in, it's very turbulent and as the Rouge has no control dam and water levels cannot be changed to help with the recovery effort. Today is the 3rd day of search and rescue efforts.
**I spoke at length to some of the guides who work for Nouveau Monde and have some more details. The victim apparently fell out of the raft in a wave called Macho, about 100ft above the Washing Machine. She was apparently last seen swimming over the right side of the washing machine, over a rock known as the Hamburger maker an disappeared In a turbulent eddy named the Spincyle. She did not resurface. The safety team that had set up on shore below did not see the victim either.
During the 2 hours it took emergency services to reach the site guides repeatedly swam the spot as tethered swimmers, not finding anything. Over the next 3 days emergency services used divers, cameras, drones, helicopters, essentially the works without finding a trace of the victim, before efforts were called off. The current plan is to wait until water drops to below 50, ideally 30 cms, then they can hold water back for a few hours at an old commissioned dam and hopefully drop the level down to below 10 cms and do another search. For the time being all commercial rafting on the section is on hold until the victim is recovered and the mechanism of the accident is fully understood. For the time being they raft a different section of the river.
**The victim on the Rouge has been found last week. The exact mechanism of the incident is still not exactly known, but due to the injuries on one of the ankles suspected to be a foot entrapment. The Québec Provincial Police was apparently on side, doing another search with a camera and a search light mounted on a pole. They did not find anything. One of the companies ran a trip in that section due to low water in the upper section, eddying out above the entire Washing Machine section and having the clients walk that set of rapids. They did not see anything. Less than 1 hour later the owner of Nouveau Monde did apparently a run on the same section and he found the victim floating in a rock garden just below the Washing Machine section. The victim had all the gear and clothing.
