{"id":537906,"date":"2026-03-22T03:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T03:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537906\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T03:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T03:38:13","slug":"paddle-boarders-rescued-as-yakima-river-rises-rapidly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/537906\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddle boarders rescued as Yakima River rises rapidly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A West Richland couple had a close call while paddle boarding on the Yakima River Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The couple, Dylan and Tamara Neish, were left stranded after the river rose much faster than initially forecast.<\/p>\n<p>When the Columbia Basin Dive and Rescue Team arrived, Dylan was clinging to a tree after losing his board. Tamara was able to safely get to the bank.<\/p>\n<p>West Richland officials were meeting with Benton County Emergency Management to begin closing off low lying areas only about an hour before the call for a water rescue came in.<\/p>\n<p>Initially the river was expected to reach the minor flood stage later this weekend, but by Friday afternoon forecasts had shifted, and waters had already nearly reached the \u201caction\u201d stage of 11 feet.<\/p>\n<p>                                              <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"responsive-image\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Stranded paddle boarders.png\"   width=\"1140\" height=\"759\" title=\"Stranded paddle boarders\" alt=\"Columbia Basin Dive and Rescue team members responded to a call about stranded paddle boarders on the Yakima River on Friday, March 20, 2026.\"\/>                                                                                    Columbia Basin Dive and Rescue team members responded to a call about stranded paddle boarders on the Yakima River on Friday, March 20, 2026.                                                                                            Scott Hunt                                                                            Special to the Herald                                                                                        <\/p>\n<p>The National Weather Service expected the river to rise to 13 feet, or minor flooding stage, Saturday night and crest at 13.9 feet Sunday night. Moderate flooding stage starts at 14.5 feet.<\/p>\n<p>Scott Hunt contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<p>        Related Stories from  Tri-City Herald<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A West Richland couple had a close call while paddle boarding on the Yakima River Friday. The couple,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[192,241022,241023,79,241021,241020],"class_list":["post-537906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-paddle-boarding-rescue","tag-rising-river","tag-science","tag-west-richland","tag-yakima-river"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}