On the morning of Oct. 10, Kwethluk resident Lewis Pavila said that he was traveling down Church Slough to his job in Bethel. It was just before sunrise when he heard someone yelling in the dim light from the muddy river bank. He found a young man cold and wet, facing hypothermia. The man had apparently been on the bank for hours, and he had no idea where the two other people from the boat he had been traveling in had ended up.
Shortly after sunrise, the body of Brenton Napoka, 26, of Tuluksak was found washed up on a sandy beach in Church Slough.
Alaska State Troopers soon confirmed that the third boater, Alexander Henry, 31, of Akiachak, was still unaccounted for. According to Bethel Search and Rescue (BSAR), the three had called ahead to someone in Akiachak to say that they were on their way. They may have left Bethel between 2 and 3 a.m.
In the hours that followed the discovery of Napoka’s body, the area swarmed with activity. The Alaska National Guard’s Black Hawk roared above, scanning the area. Meanwhile, BSAR member Jim Jim traced the shoreline of Church Slough with his two cadaver dogs.
While the troopers provided support, BSAR was joined on the water by volunteer crews from villages including Akiachak, Kwethluk, and Napaskiak.
Crews heaved on a line to pull a swamped 12-foot aluminum boat upright and out of the slough onto dry land. Several of the volunteers pointed at what they said was a fresh mark under the bow where it had likely struck a stump.
The next step in the process was to narrow down the search area and try to build a timeline of the events.
“We’re gonna go and mark where exactly he went down. There was a guy with him,” BSAR member Sam Berlin said.
The crews attached a buoy to a tree where the survivor had been rescued earlier that morning. Shortly after he was released from the hospital in Bethel, the survivor returned to the scene of his rescue in Church Slough. Standing on the bow of a boat, he gave searchers an account of watching Henry struggling to hold onto the overturned boat as it drifted slowly down the current in the darkness. He screamed to him to swim for shore, but Henry faded from view.
The first day of the search left plenty of unanswered questions. BSAR members helped delegate duties while passing out hooked drag bars and sandwiches among the scattered group of responders. They also scanned the banks trying to determine what the boat might have collided with.
‘No Clue is Too Small’
The strategy over the first three days of the search has been hashed out at the Bethel headquarters in daily debriefs led by BSAR President Mike Riley.
“What you guys gotta do is prepare yourself for what you're looking for. You're looking for a person that you're going to pull out of the water. You gotta prepare yourself for that always,” Riley said.
The strategy has also changed in real time out on the river as search and rescue crews from neighboring villages come and go and potential clues are revealed.
“Remember, when you guys are out there, no clue is too small, right?” BSAR Vice-President Perry Barr said. “When you see something and you think it's probably nothing, just tell everybody about it.”
On Oct. 11, the second day of the search, around nine volunteers from Akiachak came to assist. They rafted up with Bethel’s boats to form a five-vessel cluster, with each boat trailing a drag bar from its bow.
The following day, crews continued dragging the river and narrowing down the area where they believe the missing person may be located. They dragged the entirety of the approximately 2-mile search area in one long drift, what BSAR members referred to as a “miracle run”.
That evening, BSAR's crew brought up the possibility that the current may have carried the missing person into the mainstem of the Kuskokwim River and far away from the search area. Other volunteers shared sonar images showing irregular features along the bottom of Church Slough that they believed warranted a closer look.
Riley reflected on the sudden uptick in accidents that have been seen in October.
“I have to say, it's a shame these are all young men, you know, and it’s a tragedy that it happened to them unexpectedly,” Riley said. “We had six people die in less than one week in boating accidents, so that's not good.”
Before dismissing crews for the evening, Riley stressed that it is more important than ever to get the word out about the dangers of combining alcohol and boating. BSAR staff have said that alcohol may have been involved in this accident.
In his more than three decades in search and rescue, Riley said that he has seen no shortage of tragedies that could have been avoided.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that the Alaska National Guard was using an infrared camera.
