Water mishaps on Yakima River, Lake Kachees keep Kittitas County authorities busy

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

Around 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 area were flipped into the Yakima River when their rafts and tubes struck brush and trees along the river’s edge, three miles south of Ellensburg, 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.

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

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

— Melissa Sánchez