| OCR Text |
Show Vernal Guard unit saves man in river The Vernal National Guard Unit saved a Provo man from the icy waters of the Provo River last weekend while traveling to Camp Williams in Provo for field training. Twelve National Guard vehicles left Vernal last Friday at 6:30 p.m. and encountered heavy rain and wind, said Ken Fisher, Vernal Guard Unit. At 2 a.m. Saturday, the driver of the lead vehicle in the convoy, First Lt. Karl Wright, noticed some car headlights under water in the Provo River one mile before Bridal Veil Falls on U.S. Highway 189. Since Wright was unable to stop in the narrow portion of the highway where he spotted the lights, he radioed back and the last two vehicles driven by Vearl Tucker, Altamont, and Eldon Walton, Vernal, stopped. Seeing a person in the vehicle, two men, Greg Hayes and Arlen Froese, obtained a rope and waded to the partly submerged vehicle. They rolled down the window, and tied a rope around the unconscious man's chest. The man was bleeding from the head and was in water up to his chest. The two National Guard men pulled the man out of the vehicle and to shore. The other vehicles in the Vernal Guard Unit traveled to Provo where the Utah Highway Patrol and an ambulance am-bulance were dispatched. "The men swam, climbed, scrambled scram-bled and did whatever they could to get out to the vehicle in the rain and swift current of the river," Fisher said. "Apparently he was in the water only a short time before he was rescued, otherwise he would have died of hypothermia, because the water was ice cold," Fisher added. John Golden, 22, of Provo, suffered only minor head lacerations from the accident, according to the Orem office of the Utah Highway Patrol. He was driving a 1973 Dodge, and he could not remember how his vehicle got in the river, reported the Orem office. "He was spotted by the National Guard vehicles because of the height of their vehicles," Highway Patrol Officers Of-ficers reported. |
