Rescuers' search for missing Lincoln woman 'intense'
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BY STEVE LYNN / Vail (Colo.) Daily
BEAVER CREEK, Colo. — Mary Brake’s 9-year-old daughter gave Lt. Dave Becker a note, thanking him for looking for her mother in raging Beaver Creek.
That was June 23, the day authorities suspended their search for the 55-year-old Lincoln real estate agent who disappeared after she fell off a horse while crossing Beaver Creek on the evening of June 20.
Brake, her husband her and daughter were headed to Beano’s Cabin, an upscale restaurant on Beaver Creek Mountain accessible only by horseback, sleigh, tractor-pulled wagon or shuttle.
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Becker arrived on June 22 with seven other members of the Metro Dive Team, a group of 70 divers from five fire departments and districts on the Front Range.
“I wish we could give the family some closure, I really do,” said Becker, leader of the dive team and a member of South Metro Fire Rescue.
Rescuers from 16 agencies braved cold whitewater, steep drops and fallen trees, searching for Brake in water that ranged from knee-deep to 10 feet.
Authorities worked more than 2,100 hours during 3½ days, searching almost all 3½ miles of Beaver Creek, the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office said.
But the creek’s dangerous conditions forced officials to suspend the search.
And they’re still not ready to go back out.
“It’s extremely dangerous,” Shannon Cordingly, a spokeswoman with the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office, said Wednesday.
They’ll resume the search when conditions improve, she said, although she couldn’t say when that would be.
Back in Lincoln, 1,200 friends of family of Brake’s filled St. Joseph’s Catholic Church for a funeral Mass on Monday.
To their chests in water
Two Eagle River fire engines and other firefighters arrived minutes after Brake fell in Beaver Creek, said Justin Ayer of the Eagle River Fire Protection District.
She was nowhere in sight.
Ayer, who works just downstream, still has a hard time imagining how Brake disappeared.
“It’s a tiny little creek in the winter,” he said. “That’s the thing that everyone said.”
This spring, he said, there was an incredible rise in the creek.
“At this level, it’s pretty dangerous,” said Ayer, who worked with members of the dive team.
Searchers wearing wet suits and helmets navigated the steep, narrow creek and the drops, log jams and rock crevices that could easily trap them.
Beaver Creek ran so swiftly rescuers had ropes connected to harnesses on their life jackets while they searched.
Other rescuers stood guard downstream with “throw-bags,” with a long rope inside that can be thrown to someone stranded in whitewater. Once the person grabs hold, the rope swings like a pendulum and the current carries that person to shore.
Switching places every 15 to 20 minutes due to cold water, authorities slowly searched with long and short metal and bamboo poles, at times getting on their knees and feeling under water and rocks with their hands.
“It’s time-consuming, hard work,” Becker said. “We’re going through brush and trees and things the whole time. It just beats you up.”
A unique searchLt. Chip Carney of Eagle River fire worked with dive team members in the search for Brake’s body.
The number of officials involved — and the long hours spent looking — made the search unique, Carney said.
“I have been a raft guide in the valley for 15 years and a swift water technician all those years and have never been involved in something that intense,” Carney said.
Searchers were in water up to their chests in spots, he said.
“It’s going to take the water level coming down until we can get in there and find her,” he said.
Reach Steve Lynn at (970) 748-2931 or slynn@vaildaily.com.
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Glenda wrote on July 3, 2008 9:48 am: