High water thwarts search for 13-year-old boy in Green River

November 7, 2008 6:49 pm
A memorial has grown for the two boys who drowned in the Green River when the car in which they were passengers drove into the river.
A memorial has grown for the two boys who drowned in the Green River when the car in which they were passengers drove into the river.

By Reporter Newspapers

The King County Sheriff’s Office hoped to resume the search by Tuesday or Wednesday for a 13-year-old boy missing in the Green River since the car he was riding in plunged into the river near the Auburn Golf Course on Nov. 7.

“We were able to get one boat out on the Green River over the weekend, but nothing was found,” Sgt. John Urquhart of the King County Sheriff’s Office said Monday of the search for 13-year-old Austin Fuda. “We hope to resume the search later this week, but the river is running right now at 6,000 feet per second.”

Divers cannot go into the water until the river is running at less than 2,000 CFS, and boats are ineffective until the flows fall below about 4,000 CFS.

Fuda is presumed drowned.

The accident also killed Fuda’s cousin, 2-year-old Hunter Beaupre. The two boys were passengers in a Volkswagen Beetle driven by a 16-year-old girl, a relative of one of the boys, who lost control of the car along a windy stretch of Green River Road Southeast at about 8:30 a.m., just north of the golf course.

The girl tried to save the boys, but the river swept the car 100 yards downstream.

When authorities finally lifted the battered Beetle from the river on Nov. 11, Beaupre was found inside, still strapped to his car seat, but Fuda was missing.

Authorities started their search for Fuda immediately, with the Valley Regional Fire Authority and the King and Pierce County sheriff’s dive teams in boats using pole cameras and sonar equipment. Search dogs were employed to check the riverbank.

While river conditions were cooperative on Tuesday, they were problematic through Friday, preventing searchers from taking boats on the water.

Instead, ground searchers and Guardian One, the county’s search helicopter, combed banks of the river downstream from where the car entered the water at about the 29000 block of Green River Road.

According to monitors placed by the U.S. Geological Survey near Auburn, the river was at 9,020 cubic feet per second (CFS) at 1:45 p.m. last Friday. By way of comparison, when Sheriff’s Office divers recovered the car and the 2-year-old victim, the river was at about 1800 CFS.

Separate memorial funds have been set up at Bank of America for each boy.