Eight adults and children tubing on a river west of the Twin Cities tipped over in the water and prompted a rescue operation that ended with all of them spared injury, officials said Friday.
The drama unfolded shortly before 10 a.m. July 4 on the Crow River in St. Michael, the Wright County Sheriff’s Office said.
A 911 caller in the 11000 block of 36th Circle NE. reported that several people were out of their tubes and clinging to tree branches, the Sheriff’s Office said.
Deputies arrived and saw a man and a boy “hanging on to a tree branch, and they were unable to swim to shore,” a Sheriff’s Office statement read.
The deputies learned there were two adults and six juveniles in the group floating downstream.
“The children are not wearing lifejackets,” one dispatcher said at the outset, according to emergency audio.
Apparently in reference to two people clinging to a branch, another emergency responder disclosed that “it looks like the father has swam out to the child. Both are accounted for.”
Moments later, one of the first deputies to arrive at the scene reported to dispatch that “the current is pretty strong here.”
