Tennessee’s Class III+
Ocoee River is one of the most popular runs in the East. Hundreds of thousands
of rafters and kayakers make the trip annually. On November 1, 1997 Mike
Reisman died while paddling the river. Here is an account of the accident by
Tom Parson, who accompanied him:
“In 1968 or ’69, I met
Mike Reisman at flight school and became friends. Kayaking became the sport of
choice for me around ’74, and Mike became interested in paddling, too. He was a
physically capable person who learned fast. He boated the Colorado through the Grand
Canyon, and the Arkansas in Colorado. The first years passed swiftly and Mike
slowly moved away from kayaking. But recently, as Mike’s son became an active
and capable kayaker, he decided to return to the rivers after a long period of inactivity.
“Mike called me early on
the week of November 1, 1997 and wanted to paddle. I said O.K., maybe. Mike
also called two other paddling friends and said that if I didn’t go he would
have two other kayakers with him. I did go, and with Mike’s friends along we had
a group of four . I had not met Mike’s two friends prior to this day, but Mike
was confident in their abilities. One was a doctor who had previous experience
on the Ocoee as a river raft guide.
“The trip got off to a
slow start because Mike flipped and had to swim coming out of the put-in eddy.
He swam most of the first series of rapids down river right, letting his paddle
get away in the process. The paddle was delivered back upriver to Mike by
another boater and we were off again. As we moved down the river I sometimes
became separated from the group by some distance, but we were keeping in sight
of each other. When they stopped, I would catch up. At “Slice ‘n’ Dice” Mike
and I sat side by side talking, and he told me how cold he was. I asked if he had
something to put on and Mike said he had a paddling jacket, which he might put
on later.
“After the run past
“Double Suck” I was left behind again as Mike headed toward “Double Trouble”.
As I drifted towards “Double Trouble” I could see Mike and the doctor on the
river right bank about 400 feet downstream where Mike was draining water from
his boat after another swim. I passed Mike and the doctor with a grin, and Mike
answered with a rueful smile of his own.
“Pulling in downstream
of Mike with the other member of our group, I watched and waited while he got
back into his boat and put on his spray skirt. He was having trouble stretching
his skirt onto the boat and the doctor was leaning across to help. The skirt
was new and was definitely a tight fit. The skirt had been a problem for Mike
each time he entered his boat, but this time it seemed to take even longer.
Mike was cold from being in the water, and the weather had gone back to
overcast and rainy.
“Finally we were ready
to go again. The doctor led off, with Mike floating behind him. I peeled out as
Mike passed me and settled about 80 feet behind him. We were floating with the
current and I watched as he set up for entry to “Double Trouble”. Mike turned
slowly over on his left side. He almost saved himself with a brace before going
over. I watched him bring his paddle up into position for a right hand roll,
but he did not finish the attempt. As he passed through the rapid I watched for
him to appear after exiting the boat, but it quickly became apparent that he
was having trouble bailing out.
“I sprinted ahead
through the rapid to catch up with Mike. I could see that the doctor was out of
his boat, swimming near Mike’s boat in an attempt to help him. There was
another boater also moving into position for rescue. I was shouting to them to
give me clearance so I could arrive on the side of Mike’s boat where he had
raised his arm. As I closed the distance between Mike and myself, at a distance
of about ten feet, I saw Mike raise his head out of the water and get a breath
of air and I yelled “boat”. Mike went back under and then quickly raised his
right arm out of the water signaling for a boat assisted rescue.
“I rapidly pulled in
close to, and parallel to Mike on his inverted left side. As I reached for him
with my right hand he grabbed my boat he raised his head and shoulders onto my
forward deck. He came up out of the water with a large sucking intake of air,
making eye contact with me at the same time. He was at the extreme end of his
endurance, but had the strength to help himself up, and hold on. As I had held
Mike tightly with both hands, the other boater came up on my left side and
reached across my boat to grab Mike’s PFD. Mike was gasping for breath, and we
were drifting with the current in a very stable condition. I looked at Mike’s
skirt for the grab loop but it was not visible; apparently it had been
inadvertently folded under the spray skirt where Mike could not reach it.
“The rescue should have
been over now, since the boats were rafted together, Mike was hanging onto my
boat and catching his breath, and I had a strong grip on him. But the worst was
yet to come. During the boat rescue the doctor had been in the water floating
near Mike’s boat. As we were drifting side by side, the doctor swam between our
two boats, pulled his river knife, and slashed into Mike’s spray skirt in the
area of his legs. This knife action cut into Mike’s right thigh, causing a deep
and ugly laceration which (may have) severed Mike’s femoral artery. Mike
screamed, “My God, you’ve cut me”, and writhed in his boat from his pain. He
wrenched himself from my grip, and I had to let go to exit my boat to get to
Mike’s leg, which was pumping large, pulsing streams of blood onto me, the boat
and t
.
“Mike was incapacitated
from his wound almost immediately. Attempting to stop the blood flow, hold his
head clear of the water, and gain purchase on the slippery rocks we were
drifting past was very difficult. As the doctor held Mike’s head we pulled Mike
from his boat up onto some mid-stream rocks. I used my fist to put pressure
directly on his wound. My fist and then hands continued to be displaced from
Mike’s wound as we lifted him out of the water, and he was losing quantities of
blood. As we got Mike placed higher on the rocks I was still holding his thigh
with both hands. Mike was still talking, but more and more slowly. The doctor
moved towards me and stated that he was a doctor, and said “let me in there”,
meaning for me to give my position on Mike’s leg to him, which I did.
Emergency
help was called, but it was 20 to 30 minutes before Mike was finally placed
into the ambulance. We administered CPR to Mike on the river, and during
transport to the ambulance. A drive-by M.D. attended to Mike in the
ambulance..”
Here is an account of
the rescue by Greatful Ed, posting to rec.boats.paddle
“I wanted to write to
you about the Mike's death for a couple of
reasons. For good or for ill, I
helped work on him out there on the
middle of the river. My concern here is to set the record straight about
this tragic situation. I've also find
writing very therapeutic.
“The closing weekend of
the 1997 season on the Ocoee was November 1st and 2nd, and I had planned to paddle it on Saturday.
When I arrived, at around 2:00 p.m., the weather was
still sunny and warm.
I made a quick run because of increasing clouds and dropping temperatures, and I was off the river at
about 3:30 p.m.
I hitched a ride up to
the put-in, but as our car passed the shoals about 1/4 mile below Double Trouble a guy ran out into
the road and flagged down our car. He said that someone was hurt in the middle
of the river, and asked to use a cell phone. I used to be a volunteer
firefighter and First Responder for a department outside Chattanooga, so I
jumped out of the car, scrambled down to
the riverside, borrowed a boat, and ferried out to a rock ledge in the middle
of the shoals. When I got there a couple of
rescuers were beginning to work on Mike. One of them, thank God, was a
doctor.
When I got there three
or four people were dragging him out of
the water and onto a small rock ledge. They were trying to control the
bleeding. Mike, although confused and in pain, was responsive when I got there,.
The doctor was holding compression on Mike's leg wound, which was generally
keeping the bleeding under control. At his direction we made Mike as
comfortable as possible with our PFDs and improvised a tourniquet. I wound up
holding pressure on Mike's femoral artery at his groin while someone else cut webbing for the
tourniquet. We applied the tourniquet
and continued the femoral pressure and the direct pressure on the wound. Although the blood was mixed with water, it
didn't seem to be arterial. It was pretty dark in color, mixed with a lot of
fluid, typical of deep tissue injury. The doctor said he didn't think the
femoral artery had been hit. As I held pressure and later held tension on the
tourniquet, I checked out Mike's head wound, and it looked like he had slammed
his head. He had a lump on his left temple the size of a fifty-cent piece which
projected perhaps a half-inch. It was an ugly shade of purple. It was just
exactly in the spot exposed if you're letting your chin strap get loose
and your helmet ride back. I checked his
pupil dilation, and while his pupils
seemed wide to me, they also seemed equally dilated.
“While we were working
on Mike we kept talking to him. We were telling him that he'd be OK, saying his
name, trying to get him to talk back to us. At first he was responsive: he answered questions,
reached out to hold our hands, and complained of discomfort. But as time wore on he began slipping. He
complained of the cold, his tight clothing, and his inability to breathe.
"I can't see," he kept saying. We tried to sit him up in order to
make his breathing easier. I was sitting on the rock with my arms around him
and his head laid back on my shoulder.
But he only got worse. He eventually quit talking and became mostly unresponsive.
“It was clear to us that
we might save Mike from blood loss only to lose him to shock, so at the
doctor's direction we moved him from the small rock ledge to a larger one
nearby. Some of us had to wade through
water to get there, and we had to careful not to drop Mike. He was a pretty big
guy, all wet and slippery. Park rangers arrived at the road across the river
from. We got Mike laid out flat with legs elevated. While the doctor continued
to maintain pressure on the leg wound we
began to demand blankets, fleece, jackets, and anything else we could get to
try to keep Mike warm. There wasn't much available except PFDs. Everyone was
soaked and a cold rain had begun to fall.
“Right about this time a
paramedic who had been out paddling joined
us on the rock. He was a big
help. He and the doctor kept checking Mike's breathing and pulse. Finally,
someone arrived with a spine board and a cervical collar, and we got Mike
strapped onto the board. As Mike lapsed into unconsciousness, the doctor quickly
turned management of the wound over to a
bystander and crouched by Mike's head. "Don't do this, Mike, Don't do
this." he repeated. Mike's breathing slowed, then stopped. The doctor and the paramedic began
CPR. A man with a bullhorn on the shore told us that a raft at Double Suck
would paddle down to us and ferry Mike across.
Mike began to vomit, and
they had to stop CPR to clear his airway. Since he was on the backboard, it
wasn't difficult to turn him onto his side so that the doctor could sweep his
airway clear. We had to do this two or three times. Someone arrived with a rescue
basket, which is like a really long, shallow, plastic bathtub. We lifted Mike
into the rescue basket and strapped him in while the doctor and the paramedic
continued to administer CPR. The raft arrived, and we lifted Mike in. The
doctor jumped in and continued chest
compressions. I watched from the rock as
the raft ferried him across the river and he was lifted up the rockpile onto
the road. Paramedics rushed Mike into the back of the ambulance and began
working to stabilize him.
“The raft came back over
to the rock, and I hitched a ride back over to the shore. I noticed that the
ambulance was rocking back and forth, which meant that the paramedics were
administering chest compressions. And although I didn't check my watch, they
must have worked on him for twenty or more minutes before they took off. They
reported on the news that Mike Reisman died of blood loss. I don't believe
that, although we'll never know for sure.
The family has declined to have an autopsy conducted. I think only one
thing killed Mike: an utter lack of proper equipment to treat shock at an isolated scene. We had the training, we had
the people, but that wasn’t enough.”
SOURCE: Tom Parson and
Greatful Ed, posting to rec.boats.paddle
ANALYSIS: (Walbridge)
There were six factors leading up to the accident. The absence of one of them
might have prevented the fatality. They are:
1. Lack of practice by
Reisman, which resulted in too many strength-sapping swims. If you know you are
going to swim a lot, carry and wear extra protective gear and be ready to exit
the river if necessary.
2. Hypothermia, which
impairs physical strength, balance and reflexes, contributed to the final
capsizing. It also may have impaired judgement; perhaps a more aware person
would have put on the paddle jacket or left the river. A wetsuit or even a
paddle jacket could have kept Reisman warm enough to avoid trouble. In the off
season you should carry one extra layer to use if the weather changes.
3. A blow to the head,
which, even if it was not serious in a long-term way, stunned Reisman and made
him less able to exit his boat. It is possible he sustained a fatal head
injury. Helmet fit was probably poor; this is something that can be checked
regularly.
4. A tight sprayskirt,
improperly attached to the boat, which trapped Reisman and made a wet exit
almost impossible. I recommend that paddlers practice releasing their
sprayskirt by grabbing a handful of deck and pulling, just in case. Gear should
be tested before it is used. A too-tight sprayskirt can be loosened by putting
it on the boat and leaving it in place for 2-7 days.
5. An ill-considered
decision to use a knife without checking the position of Reisman’s body. This
action caused serious injury, and violated a basic rule of rescue: that no
unnecessary harm be done to your victim. When using a knife in an emergency, do
not cut blindly. Instead, use your free hand to feel ahead of the cutting
edge.
6. Severe shock, caused
by a combination of items 2, 3, and 5. I suspect this was the true cause of
death.
7. Reisman received
excellent first aid, but his body had been through more trauma than it could
stand.
This is the story of the
death of Mike Reisman just below Double Trouble on the Ocoee on November 1,
1997.
I wanted to write to you
about the death of Mike's death for a couple of reasons. For good or for ill, I
helped work on Mike out there on the middle of the river, and my main concern
here is setting the record straight about what was a very wierd and tragic
situation. I've also found writing to be a very theraputic pastime... and given
the fact that I'm still a little bit freaked out about the whole thing, I need
this.
Closing weekend of the
1997 season on the Ocoee was November first and second, and I had planned to
paddle it for the last time this season on November first. When I arrived, at
something like 2:00, the weather was still sunny and warm. I made a fairly
quick run because of increasing clouds and dropping temperatures, and I was off
the river at approximately 3:30.
I hitched a ride up to
the putin, but as our car passed the shoals about 1/4 mile below Double Trouble
(if memory serves...I don't know the name of the shoals and things were a
little fast and strange for me to be giving too much thought to landmarks), a
guy ran out into the road and flagged down our car. He said that a guy was hurt
in the middle of the river, and asked for a cell phone.
I used to be a volunteer
firefighter and First Responder for a department right outside Chattanooga, and
while I've let my certifications lapse, sometimes small help is better than
none. So I jumped out of the car, scrambled down the rockpile to the riverside,
borrowed a boat, and ferried out into to the rock ledge in the middle of the
shoals. When I got there, a couple of rescuers were just beginning to work on
Mike. One of them, thank God, was a doctor...and I'll write more about him in
just a second.
They said that Mike had
been ferrying across the shoals and had gotten flipped...and that while he was
underwater he had taken a blow to the head which either knocked him unconscious
or rendered him otherwise helpless. If I remember right, they said he was
underwater for sixty seconds or so. The doctor reached Mike's boat and tried to
flip it upright but was unable to, and was also unable to pop Mike's spray
skirt. He said that Mike had left the grab loop tucked inside.
So the doctor did the
next thing he could think of, which was to unsheath his PFD knife and to cut
across the lap of the spray skirt. By doing so he was able to pop the skirt and
get Mike out of the boat, but this was when things went wildly wrong...because
the doctor cut too deeply and opened a long, deep gash high up on the inside of
Mike's right thigh.
And that was pretty much
the situation when I first got there...three or four people were dragging him
out of the water and onto a small rock ledge, and they were trying to control
the bleeding.
Mike was responsive when
I got there, although it was obvious that he was confused and in pain. The
doctor was holding compression on Mike's leg wound, which was generally keeping
the bleeding under control, and at his direction we made Mike as comfortable as
possible with our PFDs and began to improvise a tourniquet. I wound up holding
pressure on Mike's femoral artery at his groin while someone else cut webbing
for the tourniquet. We applied the tourniquet and continued the femoral
pressure and the direct pressure on the wound. Although the blood was mixed
with water, it didn't seem to be arterial...it was pretty dark in color and was
mixed with a lot of fluid that looked typical of deep tissue injury. The doctor
said he didn't think the femoral artery had been hit.
As I held pressure (and
then held tension on the tourniquet), I checked out Mike's head wound, and it
looked like he had slammed his head pretty well...he had a lump on his left
temple the size of a fifty-cent piece which projected perhaps a half-inch and
was an ugly shade of purple. It was just exactly in that spot which is all too
easy to expose if you're letting your chin strap ride a little loosely. I
checked his pupil dilation, and while his pupils seemed wide to me, they also
seemed equally dilated.
While we were working on
Mike we kept talking to him...we were telling him that he'd be OK, we were
saying his name, and we were trying to get him to talk back to us. He would
occasionally screw up his face in pain. At first he was responsive to us...he
answered questions, he reached out to hold our hands, and he complained of
discomfort. But as time wore on (and the numbers of paddlers surround us grew),
he began slipping. He complained of the cold, his tight clothing, and his
inability to breathe. "I can't see," he kept saying. We tried to sit
him up in order to make his breathing easier...I was sitting on the rock with
my arms around him and his head laid back on my shoulder...but he only got
worse...he quit talking and became mostly unresponsive to us.
It was clear to us that
we might save Mike from blood loss only to lose him to shock, so at the
doctor's direction we moved him from the small rock ledge to a larger one which
was close by. Some of us had to wade through water to get there, and we had to
be painstakingly careful not to drop Mike, because he was a pretty big guy and he
was wet and slippery.
Park rangers were
arriving at the road across the river from us as we were moving Mike. We got
him laid out flat (with legs elevated...I was holding up his left one), and
while the doctor continued to maintain pressure on the leg wound we began to
demand blankets, fleece, jackets, and anything else we could get to try to keep
Mike warm. There wasn't much of anything to use except PFDs...everyone was
soaked and a cold rain had begun to fall.
Right about this time a
paramedic named Tiger who had been out paddling joined us on the rock and went
to work. He was a big help. He and the doctor kept checking Mike's breathing
and pulse. Finally, someone arrived with a spine board and a cervical collar,
and we got Mike strapped onto the board. Tiger put the c-collar on him.
Mike lapsed into
unconsciousness, and the doctor quickly turned management of the wound over to
a bystander and crouched by Mike's head. "Don't do this, Mike...Don't do
this..." he repeated. Mike's breathing slowed, and then stopped, and the
doctor and Tiger began artifical respiration and chest compressions.
At this point, somebody
with a bullhorn on the shore told us that a raft was at Double Suck, and that
the raft had been directed to hurry to where we were and ferry Mike across.
Mike began to vomit, and
the doctor and Tiger were having to stop CPR. Since he was on the backboard, it
wasn't too difficult to turn him onto his side so that the doctor could sweep
his airway clear. We had to do this two or three times.
Someone arrived with a
rescue basket, which is like a really long, shallow, plastic bathtub. We lifted
Mike into the rescue basket and strapped him in while the doctor and Tiger
continued to administer CPR. Right about then the raft arrived. As they lined
up by the rock, we lifted Mike in, and the doctor jumped in and continued chest
compressions. I watched from the rock as the raft ferried him across the river
and as the spectators helped lift the rescue basket up the rockpile to the
road. Paramedics rushed Mike into the the back of the ambulance and immediately
began working to try to stabilize him.
The raft came back
across to the rock, and I hitched a ride back over to the shore. After I
climbed the rockpile, I asked one of the responding firemen for some alcohol
foam to sterilize my hands with, and then I waited by the ambulance. I noticed
that the ambulance was rocking back and forth, which meant that the paramedics
were administering chest compressions inside. And although I didn't check my
watch, they must have worked on him for twenty or more minutes before they took
off.\
We stood around on the
scene for a while. Lance, some of the other park rangers, the state troopers,
and couple of the paramedics collected some information. I gave them my name,
number, and address.
The doctor felt like
shit. He told me he was mad at himself, and although the normal cliches like
"You did the best you could", "You did everything right",
and "That was a terrible scene" were all close at hand, all I could do
was squeeze his shoulder and shake my head. I watched as he rode away with one
of the park rangers.
And so now they're
reporting on the news that Mike Reisman died of blood loss resulting from a
severed femoral artery.
I don't believe that,
although we'll never know for sure. I'm told the family has apparently declined
to have an autopsy conducted. I think only one thing killed Mike...the utter
lack of proper equipment to treat shock on an isolated scene. We had the
training, we had the people, we had (barely) enough room to work. But none of
that was enough.
I've seen a lot of
people in shock, and they always react differently. Some act crazy, some mumble
to themselves, some shake, some wander around like zombies. Some simply go to
sleep.
That's the end of this
story. I'm sorry.
Ed Ditto
