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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE MORNING REPORT Wednesday, August 13, 2014 INCIDENTS Yellowstone NP Search Underway For Missing Concession Employee A search is underway for a young man from Georgia who was swept down the Yellowstone River near Tower Junction on Monday evening. Three young concession employees reportedly used inner tubes to float the Lamar River on Monday. Floating the river is prohibited by park regulations due to safety concerns. Shortly after reaching the confluence of the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers, two of the men got out of the water. The third man, 22-year-old D.L., was last seen about 7:30 p.m. Monday being propelled downstream by the rushing water, without either an inner tube or life jacket. Initial search efforts Monday evening failed to turn up any sign of D.L., who is described as 5 feet 7 inches tall, 140 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. Search efforts were increased Tuesday, with a helicopter, three dog teams, and several small groups of people searching the Yellowstone River corridor from Tower Junction downstream to Gardiner, Montana. Approximately 50 people had been dedicated to the search effort as of mid-afternoon Tuesday. [Al Nash, Public Affairs Officer] Wrangell-St. Elias NP&P Rafter Dies In Tana River The Rescue Coordination Center at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richards contacted NPS dispatch just after 7 a.m. last Sunday morning with a report of a missing rafter along the Tana River, a large glacial tributary of the Chitina River within the park. According to the reporting party, R.K., a resident of Mat-Su Borough in Alaska, had been thrown out of his HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packraft" pack raft and was last seen by his rafting partner around 1 pm, Saturday afternoon. Aerial and ground search efforts were carried out by park personnel in cooperation with the Alaska Air National Guard, pilots from Ultima Thule Lodge, and locally-hired ground searchers. The overall effort included three airplanes, two helicopters, eight ground searchers, and a National Park Service incident command team. R.K.'s body was located around 4 p.m. by the crew of the Alaska Air National Guard helicopter. It was two-and-a-half miles downstream from the location where he had last been seen. The body was taken to a hospital in Anchorage. The Tana River is extremely cold, swift and known for large water and difficult rapids. [Peter Christian] Saint Croix NSR Swimmer Drowns In Saint Croix River On the evening of August 9th, three swimmers decided to swim to the Wisconsin side of the Saint Croix River and then back to the Minnesota river bank in the area of Landers Landing. One of the swimmers, a 28-year-old Minnesota man, slipped under the water on his return swim across the river. He was not wearing a personal flotation device at the time. Rangers White, Trangsrud, Lundin and Christianson responded along with officials from the Chisago County Sheriff's Department. Three boats were deployed in the search for the missing man. His body was recovered later that evening. [Chuck Carlson, Acting Chief Ranger] OTHER NEWS The following stories are among those in today's webpage editions of InsideNPS (available to NPS employees only) and the Morning Report (available to all readers): Governors Island NM - Twelve YCC workers and two Student Conservation Association crew chiefs learned about historic masonry and Governors Island's history while leveling and resetting the bricks of a heavily-traveled walkway that runs through the largely pedestrian park. Today's Almanac - Red flag warnings are up for much of the Northwest. Heavy rains and localized floods and flash floods are forecast for both the Four Corners states and much of the Northeast. [Internal only] Tuskegee Institute NHS/Tuskegee Airmen NHS - This year's Junior Ranger Camp, held over the course of the four Saturdays in July, was delivered in two phases - one at Tuskegee Institute NHS and the other at Tuskegee Airmen NHS. Yosemite NP - Janet Napolitano, president of the University of California, visited the park on July 24th to meet with students participating in the Yosemite Leadership Program and other youth engagement programs. Southeast Region - John Slaughter has been named the superintendent of the new Southern Campaign of the American Revolution Parks Group, which includes Cowpens NB, Kings Mountain NMP, Ninety Six NHS, and Overmountain Victory NHR. To see the full text of these stories, readers should go to one or the other of the following sites: NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index Non-NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/" http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/ The Morning Report is produced by the Office of Communications with the support of the Office of the Associate Director for Information Resources. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov). --- ### --- |