By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Marty Gaughan of Portland is a man on a mission — one that appears likely to fail.
But that’s not stopping him from trying.
Gaughan, his wife and two friends were at Devils Churn on Cape Perpetua on Sept. 9 to spread the ashes of a friend when a California man slipped and fell 25-30 feet into the churn’s narrow basalt opening. Gaughan was among eight bystanders who tried for 20 minutes to save Steve Allen, 67, of Walnut Creek from drowning.
They weren’t successful – and are upset with the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District and other agencies that responded just as Allen appeared to drown.
The incident has haunted many in the group the past four months. Gaughan rode his Harley-Davidson motorcycle back to Devils Churn the day after the drowning. He and two other bystanders, Santos and Dulce Tovar of Bakersfield, went to Allen’s memorial service in October.
Along with two other bystanders, Tovar and Andy Nelson of Portland, wrote to the Yachats fire district, the Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard just a few weeks after the accident seeking an overall after-action review of the response by all the agencies there that day.
And, after months of emails, some responses and one public report by the Yachats fire chief, it appears Gaughan and his group will be unsuccessful in getting all the responders in one room to talk about the incident and their response.
“All we are asking is to get all the agencies together to see what could be done better or differently,” Gaughan told YachatsNews. “We just don’t want this same response to happen to someone else.”
The four agencies involved don’t think that’s necessary. They also say that even if they thought one a review is needed, they’re not sure who has jurisdiction.
A walk, a slip, a fall
Steve and Linda Allen were touring Oregon when they stopped at Devils Churn the afternoon of Thursday, Sept. 9. They took the paved path to the steps leading to the basalt rocks below.
Steve Allen headed east along the edge of the crevice as Linda Allen trailed behind. Even under the best of conditions, it is a treacherous route to the end of the churn. He was on the edge of the rocks about 30 feet from the east end when he lost his balance as he turned to look for his wife. Witnesses say seemed to have a choice of falling into the water or trying to leap the 3-4 feet across to the north side. He leaped, slipped on the rocks and tumbled back into the water.
Eight bystanders quickly grabbed belts, dog leashes and clothes to string together to reach Wilson, who had hit his head but was floating calmly on his back. Nelson’s son raced back to the Forest Service concession stand in the parking lot to alert a ranger and have them call 9-1-1.
The ranger brought a rope and a life ring to the bystanders, but it was too small for Allen to get his head and shoulders through it.
Yachats Fire and the Coast Guard in North Bend got the dispatch call at 2:23 p.m., the Coast Guard launching a helicopter with a rescue swimmer three minutes later. Eight minutes after the call, two Yachats paramedics arrived in the parking lot, walked down the path to the stairs and were directed to the east end of the churn.
Gaughan and the other rescuers believe Allen was alive, but just barely.
In a report to the Yachats fire board, district administrator Frankie Petrick said by the time the paramedics reached end of the churn they found “the victim floating face down with arms above his head in the water.”
That’s when things turned a bit ugly, both groups say, while disagreeing on its severity.
The bystanders said they were yelling at the two Yachats responders to hurry faster to the scene and do more once they got there. In her report, Petrick said the group began calling the paramedics names, surrounding them, and demanding they jump into the water. Paramedics called Oregon State Police to help them return to the parking lot above.
Allen’s body was recovered a week later on the beach below Heceta Head lighthouse.
Jurisdiction questions
Who has jurisdiction over the rescue scene is clearly understood by first responders. But who would call or be in charge of an after-action review – if first responders agreed one was needed – is much less clear.
Because it happened in territory covered by the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District, incident command comes under Petrick, its longtime volunteer chief who also serves as the district administrator. On Sept. 9, she worked with the multi-agency Lincoln County rope rescue team to set up a line across the upper canyon to lower a basket to the end of the churn long after Allen had disappeared into the water.
Because Devils Churn is largely on Forest Service property and the agency operates the small visitor center there and had a seasonal ranger involved in the bystanders’ attempted rescue, it also sent one of its law enforcement officers to the scene.
Because the land below the bottom steps is technically under the auspices of Oregon State Parks, an Oregon State Police sergeant responded from Florence. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office had a deputy there for a short time as well.
And, the Coast Guard had a helicopter overhead, a motor lifeboat just offshore and a rescue swimmer on the rocks searching for Allen’s body.
Five days after the incident, Petrick met with Forest Service officials to go over the response by their two agencies.
The Forest Service says it planned to increase the number of warning signs leading down to the rocks, but four months after the incident those have yet to be installed. It also said it will install a cell phone booster system to help calls out of the area, but that it would remove the life ring at the information station because its seasonal rangers are not trained for rescues.
In her report, Petrick said standard operating procedures for someone in the water include extending a long-handled tool, tossing a “throw bag” with rope, or assisting the Coast Guard. Yachats paramedics had throw bags with them, but did not use them because Allen was face down in the water. The fire department is now “discussing the deployment of a grappling hook for body recovery,” she wrote.
Petrick and the Forest Service have said that review is enough.
“We are reviewing recommendations from that meeting and will take any follow-up actions that are warranted,” Siuslaw National Forest Supervisor Robert Sanchez wrote in a reply to Gaughan, Nelson and Tovar.
A spokeswoman for Oregon State Police said the agency is not responsible for a review. So did Oregon State Parks, although an agency official tried unsuccessfully to help the bystander group find someone who might lead it.
In her after-action report, Petrick wrote “A person in the water is a U.S. Coast Guard call.”
After more than a month of seeking a response from the Coast Guard’s Seattle headquarters, a spokesman told YachatsNews it “will not issue a statement or an after report with regard to the rescue in question on 09Sep21, as the Coast Guard was not the lead agency or initial responder to the incident.”
Fishing crew offers help
There is another party who was near the accident that day who is upset at the Coast Guard.
Perry Bordeaux, a commercial fisherman from Newport, was with his crew nearby when he responded – as required – to a Coast Guard distress signal at Devils Churn. In an email to the bystanders group 10 days after the drowning, Bordeaux said his boat was 50 yards off the mouth of the churn at 2:40 p.m. with immersion suits and “two skilled, trained and experienced swimmers/divers/surfers who were more than capable in the prevailing surf conditions had we been informed what was going on.”
Bordeaux said be believes his crew would have been able to help rescue Allen or recover his body “had the Coast Guard accurately communicated with us.”
In his email, Bordeaux said they received no communication from the Coast Guard until an hour after they arrived when the North Bend station called his cell phone – not his radio – and said they could leave and that Allen’s body had been recovered.
It was later that night, after they heard news reports, did the fishermen learn that Allen’s body had not been found “and the guilt and anger set in,” Bordeaux said in his email.
Bystander trauma
Those responses apparently leaves the bystander group with no where to turn.
The group stays in touch regularly via email and phone calls in its attempt to find a person or agency to examine the response.
Other than Linda Allen and her family, Gaughan is probably the most affected by the drowning. He’s an Air Force veteran, longtime motorcycle mechanic and now retired Portland-area Harley-Davidson store manager.
“It was the most traumatic thing in my life,” he told YachatsNews, which led him to return to Devils Churn the next day to think through the event – and find Allen’s shoes on the ledge where he fell in. “I needed to get over that — to separate the incident from the response. Once I separated the two, I was able to heal.
“It’s a real personal thing for me, and for all of us,” he said.
The only person who appears to agree with the bystander group is Drew Tracy of Yachats, who spent three decades as an assistant police chief and incident commander in Montgomery County, Md., who has helped train the U.S. State Department on incident responses and who two years ago joined the Yachats fire district board. More than once Tracy has said at board meetings that there is nothing to be hurt and something could be gained through a combined review by all the responding agencies.
His comments have had no effect.
Now, after nearly five months, the bystander group is not sure what, if anything it should do next.
“At least look at it,” Gaughan. “Could something have been done better? Maybe not. But at least look at it. We just want to see if there’s a better response.”
Linda Allen says she is blessed to have the support of her three sons and six grandchildren and this week joined a grief support group through her church.
She’s still puzzeled why the rope rescue team took an hour to set up and lower a body basket to the east end of Devils Churn when it could have been easily carried down the paved path. She doesn’t know why the fishing crew wasn’t asked to help. But no one has reached out to her to explain, and she doesn’t understand the reluctance of the agencies to conduct a joint review.
“If we could do something to prevent another family from going through this tragedy, I could sleep better at night,” she told YachatsNews.
- Quinton Smith, a longtime Oregon journalist, is the founder and editor of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
To read the bystanders’ letter, the Yachats fire chief’s after-action report, and a letter from the Siuslaw National Forest supervisor, go here
To read the original YachatsNews story on the tragedy at Devils Churn, go here
They should close those horrible stairs and keep people as far away as possible. I walked down there once and it didn’t seem very safe.
The fact that there was an accident of this nature shows that many visitors to these areas of interest use poor judgment.
The responding agencies really should combine their efforts in a way that provides a successful rescue. The bottom line here is not WHO is doing WHAT to save a life, but that their combined and proper efforts accomplish the desired result. Reading the story is hard, in light of the loss at the end. It sounds like there were a couple of opportunities to save the victim, but the timing was off on the part of the rescue teams. Only one mission here: Save a life. Method of rescue: Any that succeeds. Think outside the box.
God Bless everyone involved.
I feel sorry for the family who lost a loved one and the bystanders who had to witness this horrible accident.
Linda Allen says in the article: “If we could do something to prevent another family from going through this tragedy, I could sleep better at night.”
The best way to prevent this from happening again is to stay on the paths and off the ledges. I’ve gone down there at least five times and have never felt in danger. But I don’t deviate off the path as I recognize the danger. It’s sad that some folks don’t take proper precautions.