By Evin Demirel
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Grabbing a branch with one hand and his cell phone with the other, Blain Pugh dialed loved ones as night fell and the Arkansas River churned around him.
He and two friends were trapped by a capsized motorboat southeast of Little Rock Monday evening.
“I was terrified,” said Pugh, 19, after being rescued by a local authorities from what he thought would be his death near the David D. Terry Lock and Dam. “I was out there for a good hour and a half.”
Pugh and his friends John Calvin, 22, and Ryan Dillon, 18, had boarded a 14-foot flat bottom boat to look for duck hunting spots along the river west of Scott.
But the boat’s 25-horsepower motor quit, so the hunters tried to steer the boat toward shore.
Three quarters of a mile south of the dam, strong currents helped topple the craft, and it caught on timbers, said J.P. Pounders, North Little Rock Fire Department battalion chief.
The Little Rock Fire Department’s search and rescue personnel first received a 5:55 p.m. emergency call from Pugh, who informed the dispatcher his phone had only five minutes left, said spokesman Jason Weaver. The dispatcher also told them to look for the guy “hanging by the branch,” Weaver added.
The team, led by Capt. Ed Jaros, launched downstream from the Verizon Arena area in North Little Rock and 25 minutes later located the trio, officials said. They were joined by the North Little Rock Fire Department and the Pulaski County sheriff’s office.
The Little Rock team gave the stranded men life preservers, but didn’t rescue them because its boat doesn’t operate in shallow water, Weaver said. The sheriff’s office boats, which do operate in shallow water, helped make the rescue.
More than a dozen friends and anxious family members waited on the west bank of the river for the three men, who live in Sherwood. Pugh was the last to disembark, at 7:15 p.m. His bruised ankle was the only injury.
“I’m not duck hunting this year. I won’t be back on a boat for a while,” Pugh said afterward.
The boat — his high school graduation gift — remained in the river Monday night.
Copyright 2009 Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.