Recovery efforts are continuing this week after a kayaker overturned in the Great Miami River on Saturday, Aug. 15, and remains missing.<\/p>\n
Middletown Fire Chief Brian Wright said crews were dispatched at 4:13 p.m. Saturday after a passerby reported seeing two overturned kayaks floating downriver. At the time of the report, the kayaks had passed the Ohio 4\/Germantown Road bridge.<\/p>\n
A special water rescue team launched boats and was able to rescue one kayaker, who was wearing a life jacket.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe informed the crews that she was with someone else who was not wearing a life jacket,\u201d Wright said.<\/p>\n
Emergency crews searched throughout Saturday afternoon in an effort to locate the second kayaker. Wright said the operation later transitioned from a rescue mission to a recovery effort.<\/p>\n
As of this Wednesday, the missing kayaker had not been found.<\/p>\n
Wright said recent flooding created hazardous conditions on the river and complicated search efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil the water recedes, we can\u2019t run our sonar because there\u2019s so much debris,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to Wright, the Great Miami River was flowing at approximately 18,000 cubic feet per second on Saturday. By comparison, a typical summer flow rate when river levels are normal is less than 2,000 cubic feet per second.<\/p>\n
The Middletown Division of Fire, along with personnel from Hamilton, Monroe and the Butler County Sheriff\u2019s Office, responded to the incident Saturday and have continued patrolling the river throughout their jurisdictions in the days since.<\/p>\n
The investigation has been turned over to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources because it is considered a boating accident under state law, according to Wright.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recovery efforts are continuing this week after a kayaker overturned in the Great Miami River on Saturday, Aug.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":375955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[123,125,124],"class_list":["post-375954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=375954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/375954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/375955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=375954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=375954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=375954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}