Worker dies in icy water

HOUSTON — Unable to escape the cab, a man died Wednesday night when the tree cutting tractor he was operating broke through the ice covering a muskeg swamp.

Jack E. Forshee III was running the hydro-ax machine for Alaska Hydro-Ax Land Clearing, cutting trees for Matanuska Electric Association in a power line easement a mile and a half off the Parks Highway near Mile 62.5.

The emergency responders got the call from the other member of the two-man crew just before 5 p.m. Willow Fire Chief Lance Barve said the rig broke through the ice and the cab was almost completely submerged. The doors were blocked by the ice.

Due to the lack of road access, members of the Mat-Su Dive Rescue Team were driven in on snowmachines. Barve said they were using axes and chainsaws to try and break the ice around the cab. After 50 minutes on the scene, the driver was still trapped.

About 6 p.m., the call came over the radio that the operation had turned into a body recovery.

Once that call is made, said West Lakes Fire Chief Bill Gamble, everything slows down. Safety of the responders becomes the primary concern, he said, and a more methodical approach is taken to get the worker out.

The other worker on the crew — whose machine also broke through, but in shallower water — was uninjured.

Cliff Silvers, the chief of the water rescue team, said the swamp was invisible under the snow cover. Unless the water sources are marked before the winter, it is impossible to tell where they are, he said Thursday morning.

The water in the swamp is high in iron oxide, Silvers said. Iron oxide means weak ice regardless of the temperature, he said.

“The simple fact of that heavy of a machine and that rotten ice, it just fell through. It’s just one of those one in a thousand things,” Silvers said.

When they got the call, Silvers said, they were severely limited by the location of the incident. Snowmachines were the only access to the site, which limited responders to basically hand tools, he said. In fact, Silvers had to command his team over the radio from the Parks Highway.

Frank Kirk, the water rescue deputy chief on-scene, said he and the first divers arrived at the site about 45 minutes after the call came out. About three or four inches of the front portion of the cab was out of the water, but inspecting the other machine told them the roof was eight to 10 inches thick. The windshield was made of half-inch thick bullet-resistant material, he said.

The ice around the hydro-ax was two feet thick in some places, and the water underneath was eight to 10 feet deep, Kirk said. The other crew-member said he attempted to clear the ice sheets away from the door, but even the team of rescuers could not move the ice, he said.

Surface rescuers were eventually able to cut a portion of the ice away from the door. A diver felt his way around the zero-visibility water, found the door handle, and opened the door.

If an air bubble had been released, revival efforts would have been done immediately, Kirk said. No such bubble was seen.

The body was brought to the surface about an hour and a half after the call came in, Kirk said.

While the water rescue crew was working, the medics on-scene were relaying information to the medical director at Mat-Su Regional Hospital. Based on how long he had been under and the temperature of the water, the hospital pronounced Forshee dead about an hour after the call came in, Kirk said.

The body was taken to the state medical examiner to determine the cause of death. Hypothermia can be fatal in as little as 45 minutes, Kirk said, and drowning can happen much faster.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.