Kan. Water Rescue Teams Recall Search for 11-Year-Old Boy

June 04--It took the water rescue unit only a few minutes to recognize that little Devon Cooley never had a chance.

The Gypsum Creek was just too angry on the last Friday of May for anyone swept into the engorged waterway in south Wichita to survive.

But that grim reality didn't reduce the sense of resolve that members of the Wichita Fire Department's Technical Rescue Team felt to find the 11-year-old boy and bring him home to his family.

"You want to get some closure" for the family, Wichita Fire Rescue Capt. Brent Holman said. "That's the biggest thing for a lot of us."

The city and county fire departments each have 15-member water rescue teams, split into three shifts each working 24 hours on, 48 hours off. On a submersion, both the city and county teams respond, with the location determining which team takes the lead.

Even though high and rapidly moving water has suspended diving more than once since Devon went missing, every shift went to Gypsum Creek at least twice. Exhaustion and frustration clings to team members like dirty clothes.

"It hits home for all the guys out there -- even the ones that don't have children," said Dan Wegner, fire marshal for the Sedgwick County Fire Department, which deployed its water rescue teams to assist in the search.

Authorities said they found a body Saturday in the water near 31st Street South and K-15, south of where the week-long search for Devon has taken place. Authorities said the body was that of a male but would not confirm whether it was Devon, pending an autopsy.

Water's power 'unmatched'

Devon was the leader among his friends, fire department officials learned as they spoke with his friends to learn more about him.

Initial accounts provided to the fire department the night of the incident indicated Devon was crossing the creek on foot near a footbridge with two friends when he was swept away by the current. The friends then ran to the Lord's Diner location at 2800 S. Hillside to report it.

But Holman said a fire chief who talked to the friends to learn more about Devon was given a different account later: Devon said that he could swim across the rain-swollen Gypsum Creek even if his friends could not. When he entered the water in a feeder ditch for the Gypsum, fire officials said, the current quickly pulled him into the creek and downstream.

"The power of water is unmatched," Holman said. "Don't underestimate the power of swift water. It will take you -- even the strongest swimmers ... it doesn't matter."

When the water rescue team responded to the report of a possible submersion at about 7:30 p.m. May 27, they found the Gypsum had swollen out of its narrow channel and climbed nearby banks.

Water flowing at three miles per hour will sweep people off their feet, Holman said. At four miles an hour it will pin people, leaving them unable to move. Officials estimated water in the Gypsum was flowing between eight and 12 miles an hour the night Devon was swept away.

If a submersion is reported, "You're going to get the cavalry coming," Holman said -- meaning both the city and county water rescue teams will respond.

While some crew members walked the banks, others went to the man-made canal near where Joyland Amusement Park once was and carefully deployed a boat designed to perform well in swift-water situations. The canal connects the Gypsum to the Arkansas River.

The Gypsum was flowing so rapidly, firefighter Matt Angell said, it was challenging to simply motor the 600-pound Zodiac boat upstream toward where Devon entered the water. The canal normally has only a few inches of water in it, but on that first night the rescuers couldn't touch the bottom.

"The way the water was shooting out of there ... it was chaotic," Angell said.

'A long day'

The rescue teams searched until dark before being recalled. When the next shift arrived in the morning, "We knew it was going to be a long day," Holman said. "You're looking for a needle in a stack of needles."

The water had dropped overnight by more than 10 feet and the current had slowed, so the team decided to "Huck Finn it," Holman said: Put two men in a larger raft and ride the current in a controlled fashion.

Others walked in the creek arm-in-arm.

"We started where he started," Holman said of Devon. "We made our way down to the Hillside bridge."

For most of that route, the water was three to four feet deep. But then the teams encountered a large hole in the creek bed just east of the bridge that was as much as 18 feet deep.

"We were in the water for 14 hours" on that first Saturday, Holman said. "I looked like a damned prune."

The search incorporated recently refined tactics and relatively new gear. Divers, tethered to oxygen tanks kept on the edge of the creek bank and linked via headsets to a team member monitoring the tanks, carefully searched the hole using weights and a guide rope that created a grid pattern. It's a tactic used elsewhere in the country when visibility in the water is poor.

Water rescue firefighter Larry Cook described the water in Gypsum Creek early last week in two words: "chocolate milk."

The search pattern was so thorough that the divers found the same tire three different times, Holman said. They also found street signs, bicycles, more tires and other debris -- but not Devon.

"You can't search better than we've searched that place," Fire Capt. Chris Conover said. "We've combed it over and over. And then when we were done, we combed it again.

"It's frustrating."

Digging through silt

Divers used fish-finding sonar and aerial imagery provided from a Kansas Highway Patrol plane to identify not only objects in the water but nooks and crannies in the creek's route where Devon might have been carried.

The search included digging into the creek bottom in case the roiling waters had covered the boy with fresh silt.

"He could be buried a foot deep, depending on how much it's churning and turning over," Holman said.

That is why "if you're walking hand-in-hand, arm-in-arm, you can still miss things," Wegner said.

When William Butler Jr., 15, drowned while swimming in the rain-swollen Gypsum in 1981, he was found buried in silt along a creek bank not far from where rescue team members searched early last week. Only his elbow was visible.

There's plenty of fresh silt in the Gypsum now, search team members said, because the force of the floodwaters was so strong it washed out soil beneath a cottonwood tree, sending it toppling into the creek.

"If that knocks down a tree, that's major power," Holman said. "The only reason we knew it was fresh was because all the leaves were still green on it."

Having the air tanks monitored on the surface saves time, Holman said, because divers are not having to keep a close eye on how much oxygen they have left.

"You can leave guys in the water a lot longer," he said. "You've got their air up top."

It also means that if a diver becomes stuck beneath the surface, "they're not going to run out of air," Holman said.

Divers face no shortage of dangers when searching in creeks and rivers, team members said.

"It's not like a swimming pool," Holman said. "You're dealing with concrete, rocks, rebar. ... I hate the rebar. It's just sticking out there, waiting to get you."

Divers are bruised, nicked up and weary, Holman said. Their equipment has taken a beating as well.

"It's the cost of doing business," Holman said.

The 'Terrible Ten'

The costs show in other ways, too.

One of the first things supervisors tell the rookies, Holman said, is, "This isn't a bed of roses. This is life-and-death stuff. You're going to see some things that you wish you hadn't seen."

Because of that, first responders such as firefighters, paramedics and police officers need to find healthy ways to cope with the emotional impact of traumatic incidents. It should be something they enjoy doing, whether it's jogging, washing the car or working out.

"This is the best therapy -- they sit around and talk about" the call they just completed, Lt. Chris Fleming, a part of the fire department's peer support team, said as he drank coffee with members of the water rescue team at Station Four at Meridian and Irving last week.

"Guys are being more in tune now around the stations," Fleming said. "It's a family here.

"Guys will have a bad day here and there, but if someone's noticing, 'Man, he's being an ass' or he's totally secluded ... himself into his bedroom, something's not right.

"Guys are picking up on that now."

Calls that fall among "the Terrible Ten" earn extra attention. Those are 10 types of cases that are especially hard on first responders.

"It usually starts with a very, very quiet ride back the station," Holman said. "Nobody's talking."

Devon's drowning "hits, like three of them" on the Terrible Ten list, Holman said: It involves a child, it generates intense media interest, and it's prolonged and has a negative outcome.

"You've got to be able to know how to deal with it afterwards," said Holman, who has a variety of ways to cope with the stress.

He will take his dogs for a two-hour walk, jamming to rock 'n' roll on Pandora. He coaches youth baseball and finds satisfaction in grooming the field.

He goes to church regularly and prays. He tries to eat right and take vitamins.

Getting plenty of rest is an uphill battle at best, though. Shifts are commonly measured by how often they get called out after midnight. More than a couple a night, he said, and they're going to need a nap the next day.

You can't return from a call, turn out the light and fall right to sleep, Holman said.

"You're going to lay in bed thinking, 'What the hell did I just see?' " he said.

Those reactions are normal, supervisors tell the rookies.

"You deal with abnormal situations all the time," Holman said. "That's why they call 911 -- something's not right.

"If you guys feel bad about something you see, you're normal."

Stan Finger: 316-268-6437, @StanFinger

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