SMART diver pulls trapped youth from cavity beneath Cumming's Dam

By ANITA MILLER - Staff Reporter - San Marcos Daily Record

The San Marcos River came very close to claiming its second victim in a week on Saturday; but instead of tragedy there was triumph when San Marcos Area Recovery Team (SMART) diver Dan Misiaszek pulled a 16-year-old boy to safety.

Dustin Kilgore of Midland had been standing on a narrow ledge in neck-deep water for over an hour when Misiaszek, who had originally been called to Cumming's Dam to recover the teen's body, found him --shivering cold but alive -- in a cavity on the downstream side of the 100-year-old dam.

The rescue came just three days after a 13-year-old North Texas boy drowned at Sewell Park, and was the first live rescue in the 14-year history of the SMART team.

Kilgore was attending a family reunion at the Davis Ranch, where Cumming's Dam is located, Misiaszek said. The teenager and a friend had jumped off the dam, and he had briefly surfaced before disappearing again in the raging whitewater below the structure. At approximately 6:15 p.m., San Marcos Fire & Rescue were called to the scene, as were San Marcos police, Hays County deputies, Hays County EMS and the South Hays County Fire Department.

Lt. Kelly Metz of SM Fire & Rescue said he was en route to the scene when the SMART divers were paged to recover the body. Before SMART arrived, Fire & Rescue personnel had searched nearby eddy pools and were set up downstream and on both sides of the dam in the event the teenager surfaced.

"We responded rather routinely, thinking there was going to be a body to recover," Misiaszek said. Once on the scene, he said he held out hope he could make a "rapid recovery" followed by CPR. "Dustin might have a chance," he said.

But after entering the water in an inflatable "dry" suit, Misiaszek was unable to get through the current. When he returned to shore for extra weight, his wife and fellow SMART team member Kathy relayed what she had heard from bystanders. "Kathy told me he's alive in there -- you can hear him yelling. There wasn't a sense of urgency until then," he said.

"There was a witness there who had a picture of the dam when the water was not flowing over the top. The picture showed a series of square compartments under the dam and above the water level. The situation was now one of performing a rescue.

"We knew from our training that you cannot fight the current on a dam at the surface to get out. That would be fruitless, lead to exhaustion, and can cause drowning. The best way out of the heavy flow of a low head dam is to go underwater and out the bottom as you swim downstream. For this rescue we needed a scuba system for Dustin and we needed to hurry because it was going to get dark soon."

He entered the water at approximately 7:09 p.m., and the force of the water battered him against the dam's face and submerged rocks. "I had to go deep, about 17 feet, to get past the heavy hydraulics and go under the water flow," he said. The first two compartments Misiaszek checked were empty but he found Kilgore in the third.

"He quickly grabbed me around the neck. He said he was very cold and didn't know if he could hold on," Misiaszek said, adding that he had to inflate his suit to keep the two of them afloat.

"I told him the only way out was going deep underwater with scuba and swimming out the bottom. He was scared but not panicked." Misiaszek gave the teen a brief lesson on scuba diving before realizing the extra mask he had brought had been torn away by the swift water.

He still had an extra regulator, or mouth piece, and told the teen to put it on and breath normally through his mouth while holding his nose. Because that only left the teen with one hand to hold onto Misiaszek, the diver had him thread his arm across his back, under his air tanks. "This method of him holding on with the fold of his arm rather than his hands was using gross motor functions. Dustin was hypothermic, and it is difficult to use fine motor skills when you are cold."

With the teenager essentially on his back, the two submerged and began battling their way out. Misiaszek said it took four attempts to escape the hydraulics below the dam. "I finally felt the current pushing us downstream and I inflated my equipment to surface. It was very dark at depth and the light of the surface finally began to show. When we broke the surface, the swift water rescue team was right there." A total of 26 minutes had elapsed since Misiaszek entered the water.

Rescuers grabbed Kilgore and rushed him to an ambulance. He was taken to Central Texas Medical Center where he was treated and released.

A "totally exhausted" Misiaszek was then helped from the water.

On Monday night, Misiaszek spoke with Kilgore and his family. "He's eternally grateful and a little embarrassed," he said. "He said the worst part was down deep. His ears started to hurt but he was able to clear his ears -- he said he learned that from his stepfather," Misiaszek said of the technique crucial to deep diving.

"This is some of the best teamwork I have ever seen," Misiaszek said, praising the cooperation between all the agencies who responded. "What made this unique was usually when we recover a body it's very somber. But when we were leaving, people were cheering and clapping. We were glad to get one out alive."

Cumming's Dam, which is owned by the Davis family, was deemed unsafe by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission in June.

© 2004 San Marcos Area Recovery Team