July 4 was no holiday for wardens hit by boat
Texas game wardens regularly see the toooften tragic and almost always distressing results of people violating boating laws and safe boating practices.
The 540-officer force is the primary law enforcement agency responsible for enforcing rules governing the operation of vessels on public waters and investigating boatingrelated accidents involving serious injuries or fatalities.
That was the case over the recent four-day period covering the July Fourth holiday and subsequent three days, as Texas Parks and Wildlife Department wardens stepped up patrols and contacted almost 18,000 boaters and worked a dozen boating-related accidents involving injuries across the state, one of which involved a fatality.
But seldom are wardens the victims in dangerous boating incidents.
That changed in a profound and personal way for wardens aboard a vessel patrolling Lake Travis on July 4, and very nearly did for another team of wardens conducting water safety patrols on Cedar Creek Reservoir.
“The July 4 holiday weekend always is one of the biggest boating weekends of the year and one of the busiest for our wardens. That was the case this year,” said Cody Jones, assistant commander for marine enforcement with TPWD’s law enforcement division. “One of the big things to take away from what wardens saw is the importance of basic boating safety, especially wearing your PFDs (personal flotation devices) and avoiding alcohol if you’re operating a boat.”
The latter issue played a role, TPWD wardens said, when officers barely escaped potentially serious injuries in two incidents involving boat operators suspected of being intoxicated.
In harm’s way
In the most intense incident, two wardens and a law enforcement division intern were on Lake Travis at about 10:30 p.m. on the Fourth in a lighted and marked 26-foot patrol vessel when a 29-foot Formula Runabout came directly at their boat. The warden at the helm of the idling patrol tried to take evasive action, throwing the boat’s outboards into reverse and turning the boat to try to avoid a collision.
The larger boat slammed into the side of the patrol vessel, the bow climbing over the gunwale and tearing into the aluminum T-top over the console.
Wardens escaped the incident with minor injuries.
The Runabout’s operator, 56-year-old Rodney G. Barefield of Silsbee, was arrested and faces felony charges of boating while intoxicated. The felony BWI charge stems from Barefield’s three previous BWI/DWI convictions.
“Our game wardens were extremely lucky to avoid serious injuries as a result of this wreck,” Col. Grahame Jones, TPWD’s law enforcement director, said in a statement. “This incident illustrates exactly what our officers are out on the water trying to prevent through enhanced patrols over the holiday.”
Wardens patrolling on Cedar Creek Reservoir near Tyler were involved in a similar incident over the holiday weekend, Jones said.
A boat running without the required nighttime navigation lights nearly ran into the patrol vessel. Last-second evasive actions by the wardens prevented the accident, Jones said. The boat operator was stopped and faces boating-while-intoxicated charges.
Over the four-day period of enhanced water safety law enforcement, termed Operation Dry Water, TPWD wardens filed 63 boating-while-intoxicated cases. Those BWI charges carry the same potential penalties as driving while intoxicated.
The 63 BWI cases were consistent with what TPWD wardens have filed over recent July Fourth holiday periods, Jones said. They were significantly higher than the 39 BWI cases wardens filed over the 2019 Memorial Day holiday weekend, considered Texas’ secondbiggest boating holiday.
But overall, Texas boaters seem to be getting the message that drinking alcohol while operating a boat is dangerous. Arrests for BWI have declined significantly over the past several years, from a 2000-2010 average of almost 250 arrests annually to a 2014-18 average of 150.
Still, the percentage of fatal boating accidents in which alcohol was a primary contributing factor rose from 14 percent in 2017 to almost 19 percent in 2018, Jones said.
“That’s a trend we’re committed to addressing,” Jones said.
Wardens in Operation Dry Water focused on water safety, issuing 2,144 citations and almost 2,000 warnings over the four days, most for violations of water safety laws.
The most common violations cited involved life-jacket/PFD regulations.
“Those PFD violations are always the most common,” Jones said.
Texas law requires that boats hold an approved PFD for each person in the vessel and requires those younger than 13 to wear the life jacket any time the boat (including paddle craft) is underway or freely floating.
“Wearing a PFD is one of the best steps a boater can take to stay safe on the water,” Jones said, adding that most boating-related fatalities are drownings.
That was the case in the single boating-related fatality over the July Fourth holiday weekend. A young man in a canoe on Lake Texoma was not wearing a PFD when he left the boat to try to retrieve an item in the water. The man drowned, becoming the 17th person to die in a boating-related incident this year, slightly behind the 19 boating-related fatalities in Texas over the same period last year.
Lake Texoma was also the site of one of the most severe of 12 boating-related accidents wardens investigated over the holiday weekend. A ski boat was towing a floating device holding five children when the device slammed into a boat dock.
Three of the children were hospitalized.
Paddle craft problems
TPWD wardens also responded to several boaters, most of them in kayaks or other paddle craft, who were lost or found themselves too tired or otherwise unable to paddle back to their take-out spots. Such incidents are becoming increasingly common as the popularity and availability of paddle craft such as kayaks increases.
“Search-and-rescues of persons in paddle craft is something we’re seeing increasing,” Jones said.
Paddlers should take their skill level and physical limitations into account before hitting the water, and they need to leave a float plan or let family or friends know where they will be and when they are expected back, he said.
Overall, recreational boating in Texas remains a safe activity. Boating accidents and fatalities have declined over the past three decades even as the number of registered boats in Texas has climbed to nearly 600,000.
This has been a wet year, with runoff from rains leaving Texas lakes at their fullest in more than a decade. That makes for great boating opportunities, Jones said. But it also means Texas boaters can expect to see more other boaters on their favorite waterways, increasing the need for boaters to not only practice safe boating themselves but to keep an eye on other boaters, something that certainly helped the wardens who encountered the operators suspected of drunken boating on Lake Travis and Cedar Creek Reservoir.
“There’s a lot of summer left,” Jones said, noting that Texas’ boating season extends far beyond the Labor Day weekend. “I encourage boaters to take advantage of it, but do it safely.”
And, he added, they can expect to see Texas game wardens out there, too.