By Roger Lanse
Monday afternoon, Mar. 27, 2023, around 2 p.m. five individuals in a raft capsized in the Gila River about 10 miles south of the Grapevine Campground. According to Search and Rescue Coordinator Mark Levesque, one person drowned and four were rescued by helicopter. The condition of those four are unknown at this time.
The Beat is reaching out to other agencies investigating the accident and more information will be reported as it is received.
UPDATE:
Five adult men of "near, or at, retirement age," from Lubbock, Texas, according to Laurie Wlosinski, Grant County Search and Rescue/New Mexico State Police Incident Commander of this Mission, entered the Gila River at the Grapevine Campground planning a multi-day float trip ending downstream at the Mogollon Box on Tuesday, Mar. 28, and then returning home. One man was in a canoe, one each in two kayaks, and two in a raft.
UPDATE-2: According to New Mexico State Police staff, the ages of the four surviving men were 58, 60, 61, and 63. The man pronounced deceased by an Office of Medical Investigation official was Tregg Granato, 55.
The group, with the canoe leading, encountered a fallen tree across the river some 10 miles downstream at the bottom of an estimated 200' deep canyon, Wlosinski said. The canoe overturned and that man was swept underwater and drowned. The other four were able to make it to shore and using an emergency communicator device they had with them sent out an SOS ultimately notifying the NMSP.
Wlosinski told the Beat other GCS&R team members were paged out but were stymied by the lack of ground access to the pinned down men. An NMSP helicopter was immediately dispatched from Santa Fe. The helicopter was used to hoist two of the men out of the canyon, return to Grant County Airport, return for two more, and return again for the deceased.
The survivors were checked out by Gila Regional Medical Center EMS personnel at the airport, none having serious physical injuries. Their families were notified.
Because the incident occurred within a wilderness area, the U.S. Forest Service was advised and that agency was quick to permit the use of the rescue chopper to extract the trapped men, according to Wlosinski.
An online U.S. Geological Survey graph indicated the flow of the Gila River near Gila Hotsprings that day was about 300 cubic feet per second down from a mid-March 2023 high of around 1,200 cfs.