A springtime frolic for three boys in Confluence Park led to a whitewater rescue from a sandbar and a night none of the boys are likely to forget.
“We were playing and the water starting rising and moving fast,” said a deeply chilled Macey Hubbard, 13, seconds after he was hoisted onto the shore and quickly draped in a white towel by a firefighter about 8:45 p.m. Tuesday
“I walked in to come back across and the water knocked me down, and started rolling me down the river. They had to grabbed me and drag me back,” he said, nodding at his barefoot cousin Joe Garcia, 12, and friend Jose Alejandro, 11.
The temperatures had dropped from the 60s to the 40s, as 18 firefighters and at least a half dozen police officers gathered around.
Divers had lined the shore of the South Platte River near the 15th Street overpass Tuesday evening, just in case. Police and firefighters had flashlights and ropes trained on an inflatable “banana boat” raft carrying one rescuer, as the river swept beneath and white caps bubbled around the firefighter, who saved the boys one by one. The tethered yellow raft bobbled and jerked the 100 feet across the fast-moving water.
Macey said the boys had begun playing on the sandbar around 4 p.m., when the current only babbled.
Tracy Barnes was walking with her family and dog along the river park before nightfall, saw the boys’ shoes and socks on the bank, and boys splashing on the island.
“I thought that was weird,” she said, but it turned alarming when she came back by a short time later, with the boys frantically calling for help.
“The water seemed like it was moving a lot faster and it was higher,” she said.
The spring runoff is traditionally an unstable time of year for Colorado’s rivers. There was no immediate word on releases from Chatfield Reservoir or other tributaries. Denver Water said releases are administered by the state engineer’s office, and an agency spokesman was not immediately available Tuesday night.
Two firefighters marched the wet, chilly boys up the hill toward a waiting ambulance, one of them, a woman, cut her eyes at them like an annoyed mother. Their parents, however, still had not heard the news.
What would they tell them?
“The truth,” Jose said, with the white towel pulled beneath his chin.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
