Officials stage three water rescues

ELLENSBURG, Wash. -- Flipped rafts, inner-tubes and personal water craft in the Yakima River and Lake Kachees kept Kittitas County authorities busy Saturday afternoon.

About 12:15 p.m. Saturday, a 26-year-old rafter from Ford, Wash., caught her foot in a tree branch when her raft flipped on the Yakima River south of the Ringer Loop, according to Kittitas Valley Fire Rescue and sheriff's deputies.

Terry Bliss was taken by ambulance to the Kittitas Valley Community Hospital with a leg injury, according to a press release from Undersheriff Clayton Myers.

Then, around 12:30 p.m., a group of 24 people from the Maple Valley and Puyallup, Wash., area flipped over in the Yakima River three miles south of Ellensburg when their rafts and tubes struck brush and trees along the river's edge, Myers said.

Kittitas County Sheriff's Swiftwater Rescue Team picked up some victims with a rescue boat, while a crew from the Kittitas Valley Fire and Department of Fish & Wildlife recovered the others along a half- mile stretch of shoreline, Myers said.

Only minor scrapes and bruises were reported, he added.

Finally, at Lake Kachees, rescuers responded to a report of a lost jet-skier whose vessel was found floating upside down and abandoned about 4 p.m., Myers said.

With help from witnesses, investigators found its operator -- Tyler Smith, 23, of Sea-Tac, Wash. -- and arrested him for boating under the influence.