News from April 9, 2009 issue

Local News
The Crittenden Press Full Version (PDF)
Fisherman presumed drowned in Ohio River
The search for a missing Indiana man believed to have drowned in the Ohio River last week continued Wednesday morning, a week after his fishing boat capsized as he and a friend were returning to camp for the night.
Crittenden County Sheriff's Deputy Greg Rushing, heading up the search for the body of Daniel David Rust, 45, of Lake Station, Ind., said searchers had turned up nothing as of press time Wednesday. Rust's fishing companion, Patrick May, also of Lake Station near Chicago, was rescued a couple of hours after the late-night accident, but seven days of searching for Rust on foot, by boat and below water with cameras and sonar have yet to yield any results.
"We'll keep going until we exhaust all means," Rushing said.
A cadaver dog was brought in Wednesday to aid with the search. Rushing said the canine is able to detect a body even under water.
“We’re trying everything we can,” Rushing added.
Crittenden County Rescue Squad has a command post set up in a camper at the Dam 50 site until the recovery is complete.
The rescue squad, the sheriff's department and Hardin County (Ill.) Emergency Management Agency have been joined in the search for Rust by the U.S. Coast Guard out of Paducah, Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources and the Hopkins County-based Kentucky Emergency Management Area II Dive Rescue Team. Rushing said Rust's body is most likely on the river bottom near their campsite at Dam 50 Recreational Area and could remain there for a couple of more weeks in the chilly 45- to 50-degree Ohio River waters. High-tech echo-location and underwater visual devices had not even turned up the missing john boat the two men were using.
The big problem has been identifying an exact location to search. When the effort began in the early morning hours after May was rescued about four miles from Dam 50, volunteers beat the bushes and used spotlights and depth-finding equipment along six miles of the muddy current, reaching as far as Elizabethtown, Ill.
Until Monday, when May returned to the recreational area for the first time since the tragedy, searchers had been focusing primarily on the Kentucky side of the river. However, Rushing said May, who was hospitalized for treatment of hypothermia and exhaustion after fighting the current for more than two hours after being tossed into the cold waters, was able to better pinpoint the site where their aluminum craft went down, moving the recovery operation further north.
"He told us it was more toward the Illinois side," Rushing said Tuesday morning.
In fact, after his rescue just before midnight last Thursday, May said Rust began swimming toward the Illinois shore but was not sure he made it, according to Terry Angleton of Hardin County Emergency Management.
Because of the temperature of the water and length of time Rust would have been in the water, Rushing said as early as daybreak the morning after the incident that the focus of the search had turned from rescue to recovery.
The search for May's friend has been further complicated by stormy weather during the last week, as well as debris on the river bottom from the former concrete dam that spanned the width of the river. Sonar, which Area II rescue team diver Richard Curtis said sonar can detect the outline of a human body, has been returning no clear signs of a body. Curtis added that divers will not be used to recover Rust's body until sonar returns a more definite signal.
Curtis and the Area II Dive Rescue Team, as well as Rushing and other local volunteers, were among dozens who searched this winter for the bodies of three missing duck hunters on Kentucky Lake.

Camping trip turns tragic
The week-long camping trip turned tragic for Rust and May last Wednesday night as they headed back to shore at Dam 50 after an evening of fishing on the river. Rushing said the men had been camping at the recreation area since March 30 and entered the water in a small, aluminum V-hull boat with a 5 hp motor. They apparently encountered trouble when their boat struck something in the water, causing it to fill with water from the back, eventually sending both men into the current as the craft capsized and sank about 9 p.m..
While Rust was apparently overcome by the waters, May was able to float downstream about two hours to safety on the shore of Cave In Rock Island, about four miles from Dam 50. Neither man was wearing a life jacket at the time of the accident, according Rushing, but May was able to locate one of the personal flotation devices and a floating spotlight to remain buoyant.
"After going down a couple of times, (May) was able to grab a life jacket and float down the river," Rushing said.
Once ashore, May gathered enough strength to yell for help, which caught the attention of river tow captain Lonnie Lewis and a crew moving barges in the area. Upon investigating the cries, the ferrymen found May on the shore of the island, covered in mud. He was taken to the LaFarge Quarry Dock on the Illinois side of the river where workers wrapped him in blankets and called an ambulance. He was taken to Hardin County General Hospital in Rosiclare, Ill., and later transferred to an Evansville hospital.
Lewis, owner of Cave in Rock Ferry, was piloting the harbor boat that picked up the survivor.
Rushing said the men apparently chose Crittenden County for their fishing expedition because family members had relocated from the Lake Station area to Marion. A third man who had been at the camp site left the recreation area before Wednesday night's accident, the deputy said. By late morning last Thursday, family of the victims had removed the men's belongings from the campsite.
The last Ohio River drowning in Crittenden County occurred in August 2002 when Randy L. Floyd, 47, died after going overboard from a pleasure boat.

Former Kimball property going to wildlife
Public hunting opportunities are forthcoming on the property formerly owned by Kimball and Alcoa in the northern part of Crittenden and southern Union counties. However, there will be no turkey hunting next weekend when the spring season opens April 18.
Mark Marraccini of the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources has confirmed that KDFWR is entering into a Wildlife Management Area (WMA) access agreement on 6,800 acres of land, now owned by Forestland Group, LLC of Chapel Hill, N.C. However, details are still being worked out on how and when public hunting access will be available.
There was also a minor snag in Frankfort last month regarding the release of KDFWR funds that will eventually help pay for the land. Plans are for the state fish and wildlife organization to buy a large chunk of property from the timber management organization which purchased it last fall at auction. Forestland Group was the high bidder at $24.5 million for nearly 12,000 acres that straddle the Tradewater River. The land was previously sold in 1998 by the aluminum company Aloca to Kimball International for just under $12 million.
Before Forestland Group closed its land acquisition deal, about 2,500 acres were sold to two other buyers, leaving the timber management organization with about 9,594 acres. It is leasing some of that land to nearby property owners and a large portion to the state for public hunting.
Marraccini said, "Public access will be permitted as soon as details of the access are worked out with the landowner and the boundary marking, signage and parking access are completed.
"We do not believe it would be fair to the landowner or the neighboring landowners to open the area until these steps have been taken," the KDFWR spokesman said Tuesday morning.
Although the area will not be open for spring turkey season, which starts one week from Saturday, Marraccini said the WMA will be open "as soon as possible."
Details of how the WMA will be managed are incomplete, but it appears that quota deer hunting will be the standard with other game animals subject to statewide WMA regulations. That means access for turkey, squirrel, rabbit, quail and waterfowl will be open to the public at all times during statewide hunting seasons or as prescribed by the KDFWR.
An area manager for the WMA has not been named and details regarding potential fees or permits for use of the area have not been finalized, Marraccini said.
Kentucky Sen. Dorsey Ridley said that although House Bill 433 stalled in the Kentucky General Assembly during the recent session, he sees no reason why similar legislation will not be passed in the near future. The bill, which contained a variety of legislative measures, included a mechanism for releasing additional money from the KDFWR's land acquisition fund. KDFWR generally releases about $1 million for land acquisition. HB 433 called for the release of $11 million. That is money the state fish and wildlife organization has stockpiled from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and other fees. It is earmarked for land purchase only.
Ridley said that, according to pre-arranged agreement, Forestland Group will own the former Kimball property for at least four years before KDFWR will buy a portion of it. Therefore, the General Assembly's failure to act during the last session is nothing that would pervert the overall plan. However, he said appropriating the money in a timely fashion would be an act of "good faith" and would suggest to the current owner that the state is serious about its intent to buy the land at some point.
The property which will be designated for public hunting is largely on the west side of Bells Mines Road and Ky. 365 and south of Caseyville Road.

Local teens avoid worst of Italian earthquake
Normally, a natural disaster in Italy would seem a world away to a teenager in Crittenden County. But a deadly earthquake early this week in the heart of Italy hit a little closer to home for 15 students and their chaperones spending spring break away from Crittenden County High School in southern Europe.
Rachel Gavin, an English teacher at CCHS escorting the youth on a 10-day cultural field trip, said Monday that all of the students and their adult chaperones are fine, far enough away in Florence from the epicenter 70 miles northeast of Rome that it was not even felt. In fact, Gavin said she and the students were unaware of the quake that struck at 3:32 a.m., local time until turning on the news as the group awoke Monday for its tour.
"At first I thought it might have been a terrorist attack, but with what little bit of Italian I know, I put together it was an earthquake," she told The Crittenden Press just before 9 p.m., from her hotel in Florence, just under 150 miles northwest of L'Aquila, the epicenter of the the earthquake.
The tremblor measured 6.3 on the Richter scale.
After learning of the magnitude of the disaster, which had killed more than 200 people and left tens of thousands homeless at press time, Gavin immediately called her husband back in western Kentucky to let him know all was fine with the group. And before daybreak in Marion – seven hours behind Italy – he had started contacting parents of the students on the trip, apprising them of the situation.
Even in northern Italy, it was "no mare" for the tourists on Monday.
Gavin said the local tour guide assured them in her native tongue that Tuesday's planned trip to Rome was "no problem," despite the disaster.
"It was really business as usual today," Gavin said of the sites around Florence the group visited.
In fact, the most trying part for the students as of Monday, five days into the trip, may have been communication with the locals.
"Having to adapt to a different language has been the most difficult part," said Elizabeth Kirby, daughter of Kay and Brian Kirby of Marion.
It is the teenager's first trip to a country where English is not the official language, though last year she made the spring break trip with her classmates to the British Isles.
Gavin is hoping the cultural experience in the heart of what was once the Roman Empire will remain a positive influence on the lives of the teens, despite the trip being tempered by the death and destruction of an earthquake. As of nightfall Monday, it had yet to shake any of the youth, she said.
At least one of the students, however, was not quite ready to take her eye off of the news.
"I'm expecting a few aftershocks," Kirby said.
Besides Florence and Rome, this year's group plans to or has already visited Venice, Pisa, Assisi, Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Some historic sites in Rome have reported damage from the quake, but Gavin's tour director did not expect any logistical problems on their trip to the nation's capital.
The group is expected to return home Sunday night.

Making the trip
Students making the trip to Italy during spring break are: Ashley Cinkovich, Cathy Hughes, Elizabeth Kirby, Elizabeth Brown, Patrick Nielsen, Kendra Jones, Tyler Starrett, Courtney Todd, Hannah Tinsley, Dillon Todd, Kaila DiMaggio, Zach Sizemore, Tara Ford, Stephanie Hodge and Shelby Dunham. Rachel Gavin was joined as a chaperone by Karen Nasseri and Cindy Moore.