Death, missing tolls rising amid rapidly moving rivers, creeks
If six Miller Coors employees had not come to the rescue Friday night, the number of people who have died or gone missing on Colorado’s turbulent waterways this season likely would be higher.
The employees gathered Monday to describe how they rescued a 27-year-old missionary from Brazil out of the icy waters of Clear Creek by holding onto each other and reaching into the fast-moving water.
“She was in trouble,” Travis Cordova, a Coors employee who braved the water, said. “What would my son think if he knew his dad could do something and he didn’t?”
As a heavy winter snow melts and runs off the mountains, Colorado’s creeks and rivers are moving rapidly. Experts have cautioned people about boating, rafting, swimming and other water activities across the state. As of Monday, eight people have died and three have been reported missing across the state.
On Monday, the latest fatality happened when a 50-yearold man from Arizona died in
Clear Creek when a commercial company’s raft overturned, the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office reported.
And law enforcement officials in Jefferson County on Monday banned almost all water activity on Clear Creek except for commercial rafting expeditions. Tubing has been banned in the St. Vrain River in Boulder County because of swift, hard-running water.
On Sunday, Larimer County rescuers suspended search efforts to find a man who had fallen out of a raft in the Poudre River on Saturday. Another woman who was traveling in her Jeep with her husband remains missing after they attempted to cross a waterway and were swept downstream in Pole Creek in southwestern Colorado last week.
On Friday afternoon, Cordova was getting ready to start his shift when he saw a group of people watching the river that flows by and heard calls for help. A woman who was in an inner tube was being pushed downstream fast.
Without even really thinking about it, Cordova jumped into his Toyota 4Runner to see if he could catch her farther downstream. He also got the attention of other employees, and they joined the effort to try to save the woman.
During his first attempt to get the woman, he missed. Cordova moved a little farther down, climbed through some brush and jumped into the icy cold water to grab the woman.
As he was attempting to catch the woman to get her out, employee Sean Nash grabbed Cordova and held onto him.
“As long as he was holding onto me, I wasn’t going to let go of her,” Cordova said. “And we both fought the current together and we managed to land her on the shore.”
That’s when Cordova was “spent,” he said.
He attempted to recover from the water, laying on top of his SUV to warm up and reverse the shock. He also had some bruises and cuts, including a black eye from the rescue, “but she’s safe,” he said.
Cordova then let the others, who he met for the first time that day, take over. She was transported to a hospital for treatment of her injuries and survived. The woman had been tubing without a life vest or helmet on the river with her church group.
They were missionaries from Brazil and likely didn’t know the extent of the water conditions.
The Coors water treatment plant was just a little farther downstream and would have been lifethreatening if the woman had drifted into it.
“You don’t want to be past our barriers here,” Cordova said. “It’s not a safe place.”
Cordova, an experienced angler, recognized his move may seem unwise, but he was confident in his familiarity with water.
“If you’re going to go into these rivers, you have to have some experience swimming,” he said. “The river is no joke.”
Employee Louis Gomez said the woman was very thankful. They gave her coveralls to keep warm until first responders arrived. The rescue was a team effort that involved Cordova, Nash, Gomez, Jacqueline Harman, Michael Harris and Christian Zelenak.
“She was very emotional,” Gomez said. “She was crying. She was in a lot of pain and, obviously, she was in shock.”
Nash called her a “fighter” who had “real determination” to have made it as far as she did.
Thenumberofwaterrescues continues to rise as Clear Creek is moving swiftly and the water levels are high because of snowmelt and increased precipitation.
The Golden Fire Department responded to at least four water rescue calls since Thursday, said Deputy Chief Jerry Stricker.
The woman likely tried to get out of the river before floating toward Coors’ private property at the diversion near Vanover Park but was swept away by the current, Stricker said.
“The river is powerful and relentless,” he said.
Stricker called the woman lucky that the Coors employees heard her and saved her. With the cold water, any longer and she could have lost all dexterity, suffered from hypothermia and would have hit rocks and other items in the river, leaving her a “good chance she wouldn’t make it.”
“It was great to have the assistance and awareness from the Coors employees who were willing to act,” Stricker said.