River Rescue, Five Alive After Brush With Fraser River

By 250 News

It started out as an ordinary jet boat run to Red Rock Canyon on the Fraser River, about 30 kilometres south of Prince George.  It ended up being a brush with death.

The jet boat belonged to Farren Edmonds of Prince George.  He, along with Harvey and Chris Schultz of Prince George, Dave Pringle from Vancouver, and Vic Mazur of Prince George, launched from Cottonwood Island Park around 5:00 Tuesday evening.

Edmonds was at the controls of the jet boat and the trip was pretty uneventful for the way downstream.  The group made one shore stop, then started heading back upstream through the rapids as they made their way home.

According to Mazur, the boat lifted, then stopped moving “We were stuck on a rock in the middle of the river. The pressure wave hit and took out the windshield. That dumped about a foot of water in the boat.  We all looked at each other and then the wave hit again, and the water was up to the gunnels.  The boat went down stern first.”

Everyone on board was wearing a life jacket, neither Mazur nor Harvey Schultz can swim.

Mazur was somehow separated from the rest.  As he was swept downstream, he remembers yelling to the other four to try and stay clear of the whirlpools. 

The four watched as full sized cottonwood tree logs were sucked into the whirlpool,    those logs stood straight up before disappearing beneath the water.  Moments later those same logs would surface again.    Harvey Schultz was in that group, and the other three with him focused their efforts on making sure Harvey, a non-swimmer, got to shore. Harvey says "When we headed to that whirlpool, I said to Dave, (Pringle) don’t let go of me, and he said  don’t worry Harvey  I’ve got  ya.  He did too, and  that man saved my life ’cause he never let go of me when we went through that whirlpool."  For Harvey, a special  thank you goes to Dave Pringle.

“I saw Farren hit the beach and the three guys were helping Harvey in  to shore” says Mazur.  For Vic Mazur,  there was no  rescue …yet.

“I was  tumbled through the rapids pretty good,  and I thought for sure that was it, I’m  gonna die, but it wasn’t.  Then I saw that little island, and I thought I could paddle towards it, but the water pushed me and I sailed right past it.   Finally I could see the campgrounds at Stone Creek and some people, so I started yelling, Help Me, Get a Boat!” 

Vic says two women came towards the shore and were screaming “Where are you?  Mazur says he could see the women as they ran along the bank, they spotted him and kept yelling to him “Keep paddling, you can make it”.  Mazur was exhausted, and numb “I couldn’t feel my legs at all.”  All the while the two women kept yelling, “Come on,  you are nearly there,  keep paddling”.

Vic Mazur recounts the  events which saw  a friends jet boat capsize on the Fraser River, and  nearly cost Vic his life (photo opinion250 staff)

Mazur says he saw a  log and some debris, and grabbed on to it.  “I was like a beached whale for a  few moments,  and then I started to worry that I would be sucked under the debris,  so I was kind of dragging myself along this log.”  He grabbed a stick and  discovered he was in about  18  inches of water.  His legs numb from the cold, Mazur dragged himself through the brush, as his   “coaches” from the shore   ripped through the brush to get to him.  

“When I got to shore, those women, and one man, got me to the campfire, and put blankets around me, and rubbed me and rubbed me.”   That’s when the call was made to 9-1-1.

 A helicopter came out and picked up the other four who were on the shore north of Vic’s position.  An ambulance came from Quesnel and took Vic to Prince George Regional Hospital. “All I could think of was, what happened to the other four? Are they o.k.? Where are they?”   He was treated for hypothermia and left the hospital to find out the fate of the others.   

He phoned a neighbour, told him to get ready ‘cause he was hooking up his jet boat to head downstream and look for the other four.  Just as he was getting ready to pull out of the yard, Harvey Schultz’s wife called to say the four were o.k.  They too had to be treated for hypothermia, but all would be fine.

Mazur’s wife Shirley says it was strange “It was almost as if Vic had a premonition, ‘cause normally he would wear just his Mustang vest, but he went through great effort to make sure he had his Mustang jacket with the full length sleeves, and he almost never wears that one.”

Vic not only credits that jacket with keeping him afloat, he says it is the only reason why his arms didn’t go numb in the ice cold water

With the knowledge the rest of the Edmonds’ boating party was safe,  Vic turned to a different mission.  He told his wife Shirley “I’ve got to find those people at the campground, I have got to say thank you.” 

Vic went back to the Stone Creek campground Wednesday morning, armed with 2 dozen roses.

“When they saw me, they hugged me.  I got to say thanks.”  

“You know I had given up twice, I remember thinking to myself, oh well, live on the river, die on the river but those two women saved my life, they gave me the  encouragement to keep  paddling, to keep pushing.”

Mazur wanted to share the names of the people who saved his life :

• Norma Holland
• Bev Griffis
• Ruth Seeman
• Tom Griffis

Wednesday afternoon Harvey Schultz stopped to visit with Vic Mazur “He told me that when the four of them were on the shore,    some of them thought I was a gonner, but Harvey told them, not Vic, not that old river rat!”

The experience hasn’t scared Vic away from the river,  he will be behind the controls of his own jet boat Sunday, giving people rides up and down the Fraser River at the Huble Homestead..  

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