Beach rescue story

from today’s print edition:

By North Coast News staff

It was a great day.

High near 50, not a cloud in the sky, calm winds. A glorious Saturday.

A wondrous Jan. 17, right around noon . . . 

Chris Keefer was entertaining family visitors, at Seabrook, where he works in construction. Kim Shelley was working in the Seabrook rentals department.

Retired Boeing worker Cathie Bisiack and her husband, home inspector John Collum, were at their Moclips home, getting ready to drive to Tacoma for a surprise birthday party.

Merch DeGrasse, a retired architect, was making lunch at his Pacific Beach home.

Cathi McMurrin, a volunteer paramedic, was at the Fire District 8 station, decorating for a baby shower.

Steve Rockey was at his home in Ocean Shores, enjoying a day off from construction work.

And two sets of siblings, Michael, Cody and Cheyenne Martin and Keisha and Cassidy Bartlett, loaded their backpacks with peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and descended a trail down the dramatic cliff from the Pacific Beach residential area to the beach below. Near the bottom of the trail, they crossed over some old train tracks, then climbed over boulders and smaller rocks set up to hold the tracks in place. A few yards west of the rocks, just past a stretch of grassy dunes, they set up their picnic area on the inviting sand.

The tide was way out, and they had been reminded many times by their parents about the dangers of the ocean, with its rip tides and sudden waves.

Michael, a rough-and-tumble 5-year-old who seems destined for a career in rugby, wolfed down his sandwich and went to play on the rocks. He was joined by Cody and Cheyenne, 9-year-old twins, and Keisha, 11. Cassidy, 14, watched them.

A little before noon, Cheyenne’s boot foot got stuck in a crevice between the rocks and boulders. The other kids joined forces to pull up on her leg, foot and boot.

Suddenly, the rocks started moving. Big rocks. Michael heard the grinding movement, and felt himself slipping. He pushed Keisha out of the way, just as he was falling.

Cody scrambled and stumbled away, and Cheyenne fell and bounced off the rocks.

The other kids got up and brushed themselves off at the bottom of the rocks, but Michael was still in the jumble. His right leg was trapped, by a gigantic, battleship gray-colored boulder, later estimated to weigh 2 tons or more.

The kids couldn’t budge the rock, and they couldn’t pull Michael out, either.

Cassidy got her cell phone out and frantically started making calls. No luck, no coverage.

As Michael screamed in pain, Keisha, Cody and Cheyenne ran up and down the beach, yelling for help. A couple cars driving on the beach approached . . . and kept on going.

Cassidy kept trying to make calls, rushing around to different locations. 

And Michael was still stuck and screaming under the rocks for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes . . .

Ryan Martin was playing in a pool tournament, in Cosmopolis. His wife, Marnie, had helped her kids pack up a picnic lunch, then went to help neighbor Evelyn Ricardo try to get her car started.

“We were just thinking, ‘The kids have been picnicking for a long time . . .’” 

Finally, the phone rang. It was Cassidy, who out by the water had finally got a signal. Michael’s trapped under a rock, she was able to say, as the signal cut out.

Marnie called 911???, then she and Evelyn drove down the hill, racing down the Analyde Gap steep, paved road that leads to the beach.

They saw the kids, waving their arms, and made their way to the spot, around 200 yards south of the beach approach, where Michael was trapped.

The two women did their best to soothe Michael, and called 911 again to give better directions. They couldn’t move Michael, or budge the boulder.

“Evelyn,” Michael asked, “am I going to die?”

“No baby, you’re not going to die, help is coming,” she answered, then turned away to hide her tears.

And Keisha was telling everyone, “He saved my life! He saved my life!”

At 12:17 p.m., Grays Harbor County Communications sent a “tone out” signal to District 8 volunteers. “Five year old boy trapped under boulder, south of Analyde Gap,” a dispatcher told them.

The District 8 station, where the volunteers gather when a call goes out, is almost directly across State Route 109 from the Analyde Gap approach. Collum, the fire chief, led a crew of volunteer firefighters and paramedics in a fire engine and brush truck. They were out the doors and on the scene in minutes.

Brian Shelley (Kim’s husband) and Cathi McMurrin were the first paramedics on the scene. Informed that Cheyenne had been injured, Brian Shelley gave her a quick assessment, and put her in a “C-collar,” to immobilize her neck and prevent further injury.

She said her back hurt a little but that she was O.K., and her vital signs didn’t show anything alarming.

Cathi McMurrin worked on Michael. She put a C-collar on him, and, as his head was in an uncomfortable position, she borrowed Merch DeGrasse’s jacket and fashioned a pillow out of it.

“Get me out of this rock!” Michael was saying.

“Can I go home now?” he also asked.

“I want this rock off me NOW!”

As she checked his vital signs, McMurrin comforted him: “We have lot of guys working here, we’ll get you out as soon as possible.”

It wasn’t going to be easy.

Collum quickly assessed the situation, radioed dispatch to say District 8 was on the scene, but they would need help. “Tone out Ocean Shores and District 7,” he instructed. “And tell them we need extrication gear.”

He also instructed volunteer Stephanie Allestad to call around and see who has heavy construction equipment. She called Seabrook.

The huge boulder (aptly described by Evelyn Ricardo in a 911 call as “the size of a Volkswagen bug hood”) was on top of Michael, pressing against the lower part of his legs. The emergency responders worried that it would shift, further.

“It was a jjgsaw puzzle,” Collum later reflected, “all these little rocks supporting big rocks.”

If that big rock moved any more, it could crush Michael’s body. Or head. Or, for that matter, it could crush Cathi McMurrin, who was down there with Michael.

With Collum directing, the first volunteers on the scene started putting “cribbing,” wood blocks, in gaps to try to stabilize the pile of rocks.

It was precarious, nerve-wracking work.

“The main fear,” DeGrasse says, “was the little boy and the EMT would be squashed like ants if that rock moved downhill.”

Jim Westby, the chief, and Jeff and Rhonda Minks, Pete Criswell and Charles Wessner arrived from District 7, which covers the area south of District 8 to the Ocean Shores gates. They brought inflatable air bags, designed to lift.

About that time, the Ocean Shores Fire Department, including Lt. Joe Hoffman, John Garner and Capt. Rockey, a 15-year volunteer.

Rockey’s first thought: “This is not going to be easy.”

Rockey scrambled onto the rocks above Michael and McMurrin, and helped direct stabilizing and extrication attempts. 

First, they tried a 6-inch, inflatable airbag, wedging it under the big rock. No go. Then, they put in a 12-inch airbag, designed to lift 3,000 pounds.

“It didn’t budge.”

Ryan Martin, the father, was on his way from the pool tournament to be with his trapped son. His wife called to say, “No, go to the hospital — they’re taking Cheyenne there.”

Cheyenne, who had been walking around nervously said her back hurt and she was cold. Her grandmother walked her toward an ambulance, where she was told there were blankets.

Kim Shelley, who had been helping McMurrin tend to Michael, was on her way to the ambulance to get water for the boy. She saw Michael’s older sister, walking tenderly. The volunteer paramedic asked the girl how she was doing. “I’m cold,” Cheyenne said.

“Let’s board her!” Shelley commanded.

Kim and her husband strapped Cheyenne on a stabilizing body board, then moved her to the back of the ambulance.

“I just thought, ‘She’s wearing a C-collar, she’s cold . . .’ I made the decision to board her, and for safety to get her checked out at the hospital.”

It proved to be an exceptionally keen decision. Kim Shelly assessed the girl for obvious injuries and stayed with Cheyenne in the back of the ambulance as it raced toward Grays Harbor Community Hospital.

At the hospital, X-rays and further examinations revealed various internal injuries. Surgery was required.

At least her father was at the hospital, to comfort Cheyenne. 

“Am I going to die?” Michael would ask, every once in a while.

For going on two hours, he’s been trapped under this frightening boulder, and nothing was working. McMurrin helped distract him by having him hold the stethoscope to his chest, making a game of it.

Fearing Michael might have serious, or even life-threatening injuries, Ocean Shores Fire had called for a Life flight helicopter.

The “jaws of life,” typically used to cut people out of grisly car accidents, was not help.

The rescuers put a 12-ton jack under the rock, then a bigger, off-road jack. Neither did anything.

By now, Chris Keefer was on the scene, behind the wheel of a Seabrook forklift.

 With nothing else working, Collum, Rockey and others decided to give the fork lift a try. Keefer maneuvered the forklift nearer the rocks, then turned over the controls.

“I run those at work all the time,” local resident Cliff Jackson told Collum. The chief told him to take over the forklift.

Rockey and others on the rocks slipped straps underneath the big rock. Jackson pulled in closer, and lifted the forklift’s “tongue” in the air. Rockey and the others secured the straps onto the forklift tongue, and stepped away.

Jackson pulled up on the controls, and the rock started to lift.

The devious bolder was only raised an inch or two when McMurrin and others were able to scoot Michael out onto a waiting backboard.

Some of his clothes were cut off, to assess his injuries. Once he was stabilized, Michael was placed in the helicopter, and zoomed off to Harborview Hospital, in Seattle.

“It was good,” he later said of the helicopter ride. “I liked it.”

Michael spent the night in the hospital, and was released the next day. No broken bones, no major injuries.

The scratches on his face he’s now wearing? That was from falling off his scooter, two days AFTER he was rescued.

Saturday, Michael and his family and friends gathered with rescuers from Districts 7 and 8 and the Ocean Shores Fire Department who, a week earlier, had spent an exhausting, nerve-rattling two hours. Michael was running around, kicking a ball with his brother and friends. When time came to assemble for a photo shoot, Michael did not hesitate in scrambling on top of the rock that, seven days to the hour before, toyed with his young life.

One person missing from the photo: Cheyenne. She was still in the hospital. The girl that was at first thought to be unharmed was recovering from surgery.

“She’s doing a little better,” her mother said over the weekend. “Every day, a little better.”

The week before, after the sand stirred up by the helicopter’s blades had settled, and the roar of the chopper faded to a buzz, finally giving way to the soothing sound of the tide coming in, the rescue workers gathered their gear, grinned and high-fived, exchanged hugs with Michael’s family and friends, and went back to their normal lives.

It was Saturday, Jan. 17, 2009 when a boy and a girl were snatched from harm’s way by a small army of volunteers.

It was a great day.