Saturday morning, members of the Harrells Volunteer Fire Department rescued four boaters who had been stranded along the Black River in the Ivanhoe area for roughly 12 hours.
According to Sampson County Fire Marshal Prentice Madgar, who aided the department in the operation, the boaters had taken off from the Ivanhoe boat dock and were planning to head in the direction of an area called Henry’s Landing. According to Madgar, the group mistakenly thought the trip would be shorter than it was, and they got lost along the way.
“They thought it was about a three hour float,” said Madgar. “Essentially it’s not, it’s a much longer float than that when the river has water in it. However, the river now has become extremely low. Because of that, they became stranded several, several miles down the river.”
Originally, the group had called a friend to help, asking them to head up to Henry’s Landing to rescue them, however, Madgar said that the friend also got lost during his attempt to find his friends.
“He went up to Henry’s Landing to put his boat in the water and go get them,” explained Madgar. “He ended up getting stuck, too, and he was the one who called 911 and reported the incident.”
After the call, several local departments in Sampson, Duplin and Pender counties worked together to help rescue the stranded boaters. In doing so, the team was able to find the boaters.
“We went down and put in a couple boats at the ramp, then headed up river to get to them,” said Madgar. “Myself and the assistant chief rode back a little bit until we got to the river bank. We pulled out a drone and were able to find them up the river. We then dropped a pin on them to tag their exact location.”
The group were trapped in a part of the river that didn’t allow for easy access. The area was surrounded by trees, hindering the search team’s efforts. Additionally, the low water levels in the river made crews resort to dragging boats through sand to get to the boaters.
“The people that were in the boats were actually having to drag their boats across sand to get to them because the water was so low. We had an airboat that couldn’t get to them because of the trees. We found a landowner that would allow us to go in off of Dr. Kerr Road. We went in there and and got as close to the river as we could and eventually brought them out of the woods and back to the highway.”
According to Madgar, the rescue was completed at 10:30 Saturday morning. The initial call for the incident came at 4 a.m. After the incident, Madgar stated that EMS checked the group out for injuries and made sure all parties were stable. No injuries were reported.