The Rensselaer Outing Club had its first rafting trip to Zoar Outdoor Adventure Resort on Sunday in Charlemont, Massachusetts. ROC had 14 members on the trip split among three separate rafts lead by John Lembke ’07, graduate student Jen Zuba, and alumnus Matt Filippelli. Raft leaders Lemke and Zuba ran the Dry Way section of the river on Saturday before the actual outing on Sunday and the course ran smoothly.
During the raft trip on Sunday the group of 14 made it down the whole river very well until they got to the last and hardest rapid on the river called Dragon’s Tooth.
As Lembke explained, “There’s a certain line you hit when going over a rapid, and I hit it right on and eddied out.” As Lembke waited for the other two rafts to get through Dragon’s Tooth, he saw Zuba hit the rapid just like Lembke and then rode the wave, which ended up causing her raft to flip over. The four people on Zuba’s raft were thrown into the river, although three managed to hold on as they rode down the river. However, one Outing Club member—Kathryn Chang ’07—couldn’t get a hold of the raft as it went down the river. Lembke stressed, “The raft flipping over was no one’s fault; it was nature, and no one can control that.”
As this situation materialized, Lembke, on the river right, pulled up onto the shore. He threw out a throw rope to try and help those holding onto the raft but saw they were too far away, and at this time he also saw Chang go into the rocks on the other side of the river. Chang remembers going down the last rapid, called Shark’s Fin, and tilting over to one side. The raft member next to her rolled onto her and then the whole crew was in the water. Chang said, “There was no line to grab onto off of the raft; one was supposed to be there.” After she couldn’t hold onto anything, she slipped and drifted down the river. Before passing out, Chang remembers getting instructions from her raft leader Zuba to keep her alive and above the water.
Lembke paddled his raft over to the other side of the river to help her. As they paddled closer he saw her wedged in between two rocks, with her hands flailing in the air and water rushing over her head. According to Lembke and Jonathan Davis ’09, the club’s first aid chair, said that it took them four minutes from the time the raft pushed off from the shore to when Kathryn was pulled out from between the rocks. Lembke yelled to the third raft leader, Filippelli, that a member was stuck and to get a throw rope to run up the river bank. At this time a commercial guide for Zoar Outdoor, Justis Hatch, who was actually not working on Sunday but out on the river for pleasure, came to help out with the rescue.
Hatch, a commercial guide for Zoar Outdoor who was helping the rescue effort, told Lembke that they weren’t going to be able to get Kathryn out. Lembke told Hatch to move out of the way as he went to pull on her vest as hard
as he could almost pulling the vest off. Lembke then immersed himself half under the water and grabbed Chang’s midsection and pulled her out, rescuing her with the help of another guide at the scene.
Erica May, a guide for Zoar Outdoor who was with Hatch in his raft, who is also a nurse at Tescher Medical Center, administrated CPR on shore. May recalls coming down through Dragon’s Tooth Rapid not knowing what was going on with the ROC. She said, “We saw a helmet in the water and at first I thought someone had just lost a piece of gear.”
May said once she got up to Hatch and Lembke they already had Chang out and were bringing her to shore. She cut open Chang’s dry suit and at that point She had no pulse and was not breathing. May then initiated CPR and had another guide assistant from Crab Apples Rafting Company help her with the rescue breathing as she did the chest compressions. After four cycles of CPR, Chang got a pulse back and soon after began breathing on her own. May said, “I didn’t really have time to think about what was going on. I just started acting. Justis’s quick acts clicked my thinking over pretty fast and my main focus was knowing what needed to be done.”
Once Chang was stabilized, she was loaded on to a backboard and onto their raft along with six other people and paddled the raft across the river to the parking lot area. During the transport from the shore to the parking lot Chang was alert and talking. Once at the parking lot, the EMTs arrived and kept Chang stable until the paramedics arrived with the ambulance.
Chang, who had never rafted before in her life, commented on the experience saying, “I wasn’t scared. I knew I couldn’t struggle and that I had to save my energy. I stayed calm, didn’t panic and did what I had to do before I passed out.” The reason she stayed so calm, Chang explained, is because she had no time to react emotionally when the situation was happening.
Lembke, who spoke to Chang that night at the hospital, was glad she was okay. Outing Club President Steven Bornhoft ’07 and Lembke feel that the club’s emphasis on safety training and preparation was important to this rescue, because those skills and level-headed leadership are what saved Chang. Lembke commented, “The fact that Kathryn survived and came to really quickly means that we know what we’re doing and we reacted as soon as the situation happened without hesitation, we knew what to do and where to go.”
May said in reflection after the whole rescue, “I am so glad she’s okay with no lasting injuries. It was a very intense experience, so I’m sure it will take some time to work through it and figure it out, but overall I am very relieved everything worked out.”
Chang said the whole experience has hit her slowly as she has been retelling her story. She expressed her gratitude, “I am thankful for a nurse being there that day. I am desperately thankful for John [Lembke] and Jonathan [Davis] for noticing that I was not with the rest of my raft and for John actually getting into the water and using his physical strength to get me out and save me.”
