Day 3- The “More On This Later”

While we were at the Three Sisters, a Park Ranger asked us not to go beyond a certain point. We wondered about this although the rocks were quite slippery even dry. Carl found a path in the other direction so I could take some photos of the rapids and little waterfalls up river and that’s when we saw the boat sunk in the river up to the gunwales. One of the guys on our tour asked a news reporter on scene and the following is part of the article she wrote for the evening news:

NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. - YNN News Report - An early morning rescue on the Niagara River took a complicated turn Saturday. It started with a 911 call at around 2:15 am, about a disabled boat stuck near the power intakes with four teenagers on board. "Niagara Fire Department and New York State Park Police responded to that and quickly removed the people in that situation. In an attempt to recover the boat that was involved in that, the Park Police launched a jet boat into the river and in the process of that, actually grounded in the river," said Sergeant Mark Van Wie of the New York State Park Police.

Sergeant Van Wie says the police boat got hung up on rocks about 300 yards south of Horseshoe Falls.

"It's a very dangerous area as you can tell, with varying depths of the water, the rocks and what have you, and obviously the falls," said Van Wie. That meant some complications in the rescue of the officers, which included help from both sides of the falls. "That boat was in heavy water, only hanging on an anchor, and the water was high. We didn't want to put any extra stress on it. There was no way you could have just landed beside the boat so they could have jumped on to the helicopter," said Ruedi Hafen, the helicopter pilot involved in the officers' rescue. With a joint effort between the U.S. and Canadian responders, both officers were safely rescued around 8 am.