Video: Quick Thinking Helps Save Brothers

SILOAM SPRINGS — Two boys who jumped from the City Park dam into rain-swollen Sager Creek in downtown were rescued by bystanders Thursday.

The two were brothers, ages 10 to 13, according to Travis White, Siloam Springs Fire Department battalion chief. They were taken to Siloam Springs Regional Hospital for examination. The first 911 call was answered at 1:19 p.m.

Dale Smizaski, a worker on the crew building the University Street bridge a few yards downstream, saw the duo jump in.

At A Glance

About Low-Head Dams

Dams such as the one on Sager Creek are low-head dams, commonly called “drowning machines,” according to www.damsafety.org, the website of the Association of State Dam Safety Officials. The current creates a circular cycle against the dam’s downstream side. Anything trapped there is forced to the bottom, then the surface, then the bottom again in a long-lasting cycle. The website notes many rescue personnel have died attempting to save others trapped in the current below low-head dams.

Source: Association of State Dam Safety Officials

“As soon as they hit the water they got sucked under,” Smizaski said. “They jumped in and that’s all she wrote — they was underneath.”

He took off his work gear and ran along the west bank to get closer. He said everyone started hollering “Call 911.”

Those words, “Call 911,” got the attention of Eric Briley, who sat in his pickup in a nearby parking lot. He said he wasn’t expecting what happened next.

“I seen them over here running on the side,” Briley said, point to the far side of the creek. He told his four young boys to sit on the grass, then ran to the creek and jumped in.

Smizaski said dealing with the current was a battle for the boys as well as Briley and himself.

“They were under it for quite awhile, they’d bob their heads up, and we were fighting it,” Smizaski said. “We just fought and fought and fought. We were telling them to try to come to us and swim, but they couldn’t do it. The current, it’s strong. I had to fight it the whole way there.”

Briley and Smizaski estimate the boys were trapped in the cycling current below the dam for possibly five minutes.

Once out of the torrent, Smizaski said, ‘They were praying, they were extremely excited to be out of the water.” He described them as “limp noodles” because they were exhausted.

As they were emerging from the creek, firefighters from nearby Station No. 2 arrived, walking up with a variety of rescue gear used in swift-water rescues.

Smizaski noted he almost had to rescue the pair only minutes before.

“They were (in the creek below the dam); they began to scream ‘Help’ when they started to get washed down the river, and we watched them get to the side (and get out of the water). So that’s when they went up there and jumped in. They walked out on the dam and jumped,” Smizaski said.

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