Heartache of the search

Ironically, according to family and friends, one of Kaelan’s favorite pastimes was climbing trees. And that is what EMT Skip Kosciusko does every day for work. It was those skills, even more than his rope-rescue training, that made it possible for the Cornwall Volunteer Fire Department Rescue Captain to finish the rescue effort Kaelan had started.

Kosciusko wanted to share the entire story of that week, as painful as it is for him.

"Every time I tell it, I feel a step closer to getting past it," he said. "But I know none of us will ever be completely over it."

Kosciusko knew Kaelan from the time he was very young, and is friends with parents Catherine Palmer Paton and David Paton.

Kosciusko and David Paton have been in frequent contact. The family wants the community to know how much care the volunteers showed, he said, and to appreciate the tremendous skills they had honed for just such an emergency. Knowing the details may help others deal with the tragedy. And knowing the dangers of the river may save lives.

Kosciusko explained the events as they unfolded on June 16. "Donny Reid [Lakeville Hose] was the first on scene. He was mobilizing resources before he even got there, which saved lives. You never have a chance if you don’t get right on top of it."

Kosciusko is one of a small group of volunteers in the Northwest Rope Rescue Team, which formed about a year and a half ago.

When Kosciusko arrived on the scene, another team member had already rappelled down the steep rock face where one teenager waited just out of the water.

"He was pointing frantically toward a cave, as everyone is calling it. But you have to understand it’s not really a cave. It’s a hole in the rock carved out by the water. It’s no bigger than a large TV."

Huddled inside, where Kaelan reportedly tried to push him to safety, was another boy, who is from Kent. He had only one foothold, and just a fissure in the rock for a handhold.

"He was not out of danger by any means. He was precariously hanging on to avoid being washed out and he was in the last moments before hypothermia would leave him too weak to hold on."

Kosciusko had planned to give the boy a lifejacket and then assess the situation. The spot was not visible from the command post at the top of the rock. He knew when he got there he had to pull the boy out right away. Weak and barely coherent, the teen couldn’t even put on the life jacket. Kosciusko cinched a rope around his chest, then prepared to secure him in a rescue saddle and preserver.

Despite their training, none of the team was familiar with that stretch of the river. Known as The Rattlesnake, it is rated Class IV (or very difficult) by whitewater paddlers.

Even if they had been familiar with the water there, the currents change constantly when the Great Falls are active. The conditions on that day were close to flood stage, with the water moving at about four times the normal rate.

Kosciusko said he does not know how long the rescue took. Maybe it was 10 minutes, maybe 45. Time was standing still.

A series of photos taken from across the river by one of the volunteers shows the river level fluctuating by several feet during that short period.

Kosciusko described a vortex, or whirlpool, possibly created by massive volumes of water careening over the rocks from at least two directions.

"What you couldn’t see below the spray was a solid stream of water coming down a chute just upstream of the cave. It was hitting this pool where the vortex was. At times, it made a hole in the water. Then the hole would fill up and the water would rise rapidly. That boy in the cave would go from being totally out of the water to being submerged to the waist."

What had caught the three boys was a sort of rip tide. Along the base of the rock face, the current was pulled back upstream, straight into the vortex.

At that point, Kosciusko didn’t know that Kaelan was in the river. He only knew that he had to get the one boy out of that cave and back up the cliff.

As Kosciusko started to pull the boy out, the rope was snatched from his grip by the tremendous force of the stream coming down the chute.

"It just grazed my shoulder, but it was like getting hit by a car. It ripped my pants, blasted the sunglasses off my face and threw me about 6 feet downstream." The boy was sucked instantly into the vortex and disappeared for a moment.

"I didn’t know if the rope would hold him, or if the loop around his chest would kill him."

Being tossed away from the vortex put Kosciusko in a better position, and possibly gave him the only chance he would have to save the boy. He pitted his own strength against the force of the river and hauled on the rope. "I almost didn’t believe it when he came clear."

Managing to get the boy into the rescue saddle, Kosciusko was faced with a climb that began on an inverted rock face. There were no footholds and the boy was dangling, and helpless. The noise of the water was deafening, making radio contact impossible. He might have signaled for someone to haul them up, but he didn’t even know people were watching from the side of the river. For most of the way up the 40-foot cliff, he was on his own.

"At that point, it had nothing to do with rescue training. It was just me doing what I do every day; it was like climbing a tree."

As they came into view of rescuers at the top, team member Dave Williamson met them with a safety line, and the pair was hauled up. Team member Freddie Scoville also participated.

It was when Kosciusko got to the top that he was asked, "Where’s Kaelan?"

He pauses in the story, recalling that moment of horrible realization that another boy, someone he knew well, was missing.

"The last person to see Kaelan was Brian Hurlburt [a boy who had not gone into the river, but had gone to seek help]. Kaelan signaled to him with his fingers ‘911.’ There were also reports of that one boy in the cave and Kaelan holding hands. I think he was trying to keep Kaelan from being pulled in."

Kosciusko was ready to go back down, but was stopped by Reid, who had organized a fresh team of rescuers.

"Right then, my pager went off. There was a bad rollover accident in Cornwall that I rushed off to."

Kosciusko came back, though. He was among those who spent a week on the river, looking for Kaelan’s body. Cornwall recently purchased a Zodiac rescue boat. It’s a rare year that the town does not do a high-water rescue on the river.

‘There were so many people involved, I wish I could name them all. People like Jacquie Rice [Salisbury Volunteer Ambulance chief], who organized a watch over that pool of water, knowing that when the water changed...

"Adjusting from a rescue to a recovery operation is tough. It’s a horrible thing to realize your best efforts were not enough. To lose a kid is even worse. There’s nothing worse than that. I was involved in the recovery of that little girl caught under the ice in Great Barrington. That was about 10 years ago, and you never shake it."

Early on the morning of June 23, Kosciusko was home when he got a call from State Trooper Ed Capowich. The two are close friends, and the veteran trooper made a decision to call Kosciusko. He knew the Cornwall rescue captain lives just up the road from the Covered Bridge, and would know immediately what to do. Capowich told him a train engineer was tracking a body floating down the river along River Road, near the Cornwall town line.

There would be just enough time to launch the Zodiac, manned by Steve Hedden, Steve Heaney and Jim Vanicky. Kosciusko raced to the center of West Cornwall, feeling a desperation totally different from what he experienced during the rescue. He parked his truck, emergency lights flashing, right in the middle of the bridge.

The tones were set off for Cornwall fire and ambulance to respond to headquarters and by landline to Litchfield County Dispatch, the region’s 911 service, he said. The hope was that details of the situation would not go out over the radio waves.

"But people figured it out and were rapidly showing up at the bridge. I put a person in every window to keep their eyes peeled. The water spreads out and slows at those small rapids just above the bridge, and I knew this was our chance."

No sooner did the Zodiac hit the river than the crew was in action. "They intercepted the body. Jimmy secured it to the side of the boat, and they just stopped. It was overwhelming. It is truly the most horrible job you can imagine."

They came out of the river on the Route 7 side, accessing it from a private driveway just below the bridge, where Kosciusko was able to identify Kaelan, because he had known him for so many years.

"As soon as they came ashore, the guys on the boat had to leave, they were so overwhelmed."

Kosciusko takes some solace, now that the extensive critiquing of the rescue operation has been done, in knowing that they did as much as they could. After experiencing the conditions of the river on June 16, he could also reassure Kaelan’s parents somewhat.

"I’m sure he was in that vortex. We never would have been able to save him. I told Dave and Catherine that it would have been quick. He would not have suffered."