Big Storm at Bullfrog/Halls

Status
Not open for further replies.
One of our owners, long time Powell people were there on the buoy. They had people sleeping in boats tied off to our houseboat. The impact of the storm snapped the ropes on both boats. His son and grandson were in his Mastercrart and had to abandon it when it was apparent it was going down. They were in the water 45 minutes trying to grab onto another boat. Meanwhile the other boat swamped as well and drifted out with his close friend and his wife. About 6 am he was reporting to 911 four people missing. (Hard to imagine). His son and 5 yr old grandson miraculously got onto another bot while his two fiends got pushed into a cove. His boat eventually got pushed into the same cove. A very”perspective adjusting” experience that turned out with the best possible outcome. We hav a monohull houseboat, waves were coming clear over the front deck into the cabin. Our forward hold took on a lot of water but fortunately the bilge pumps worked effectively. There is a lot more to the story but, so very, very grateful everyone survived.
 
Slots-R-Us said:
One of our owners, long time Powell people were there on the buoy. They had people sleeping in boats tied off to our houseboat. The impact of the storm snapped the ropes on both boats. His son and grandson were in his Mastercrart and had to abandon it when it was apparent it was going down. They were in the water 45 minutes trying to grab onto another boat. Meanwhile the other boat swamped as well and drifted out with his close friend and his wife. About 6 am he was reporting to 911 four people missing. (Hard to imagine). His son and 5 yr old grandson miraculously got onto another bot while his two fiends got pushed into a cove. His boat eventually got pushed into the same cove. A very”perspective adjusting” experience that turned out with the best possible outcome. We hav a monohull houseboat, waves were coming clear over the front deck into the cabin. Our forward hold took on a lot of water but fortunately the bilge pumps worked effectively. There is a lot more to the story but, so very, very grateful everyone survived.
Click to expand...
Would you mind asking or maybe you already know. Was the small boat tied to the side of the Houseboat separated by bumpers or was it on its own rope drifting behind, downwind? I think we could all use events like this to learn and I would really like to know what happened here.
 
We had almost the same problem, front bilge pumped hard and I told the wife we can stay here and watch the 20 ft deep V sink behind the houseboat, or we could go home that afternoon a couple years ago on Labor Day weekend. That winter we made sure it was in a safe slip on the inside of Halls. It was a hard wind from the north, straight from Bullfrog and the lake was about 100 ft higher.
 
I asked. The boats were tied tight to the houseboat. However, the response back was that it would not have made a difference how the boat was tied. The waves were multi-directional. He remembered at previous time when the waves were coming over the top of his bow in a bad wind but he said the waves that time were only half as big. The storm (I understand it was a dry micro-burst) came up so fast, they had no time to do much of anything. His takeaways 1) Don't sleep in the ski boat. 2) Don't try to save your runabout boat (that one was hard to say but...) On another somewhat curious note. During all of this they only saw one park ranger the next morning. There was a state official of some type that dropped in as well. Executive services didn't answer the phone or get in until 8:00 am. He said that once they got in touch with them they were extremely helpful and took great care of them all day long. They also took a crane over and got their boats turned back over and pumped the water out and then towed them back to a slip that is still near the boat ramp. He had nothing but good to say about them once they got in to work. With all that was going on and people missing it seemed curious there was not more of a law enforcement response sooner. I'm not casting any aspersions, they responded very quickly to an serious fall injury we had a couple years back further up the lake. So, that is only an observation and I guess the other lesson learned (or relearned) is you are on your own to a very large degree on the lake. Ohhh...one thing that must be said. He told me the first day they have always taught their children to wear their lifejackets. The first thing that happened when everything broke loose is they put their lifejackets back on. No life jackets and it is almost certain a young father and his 5 year old son would not have lasted the night. A few other bits....our houseboat is a mono-hull. It tends to have more circular movement around the buoy than the pontoon boats and he mentioned that was a little bit of a factor. I know there were some houseboats that went down, but in our case, and looking at the whole scenario, the safest place to be was on the houseboat. I'm very happy our houseboat bilge pumps performed well but the massive amount of water breaking over and into the runabouts would overwhelm any bilge pump. I did some study on detection and a plunging barometer is a good indicator along with weather service reports but microbursts like this often go undetected by the weather monitoring systems. I don't know many people up at 1:00 am staring at the barometer either. The rest of August and into September is going to be susceptible to this kind of weather so it pays to give it attention, go over safety rules and procedures with your group. I'm kind of rambling on here and would love to hear any other input but it is life and death serious and worth thinking about and discussing.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top