4 dead, 1 injured after small vessel collides with towboat on Monongahela River
Four people died and one person was hospitalized after a towboat and a private vessel collided Sunday night along the Monongahela River in southwestern Pennsylvania.
The boat collision happened around 9 p.m. on Sunday along the Monongahela River, approximately one mile south of Min Love Park in Rices Landing. Officials said the initial call came in from a towboat pushing or pulling empty barges, followed by a distress call from another private boat. The smaller boat was around 24 feet long.
That boat then capsized, and the dark conditions posed challenges when it came to rescuing people. Crews recovered the boat Monday morning.
A man and a woman were rescued by the barge crew and flown to area hospitals on Sunday night. The woman, who was flown to J.W. Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, West Virginia, was declared deceased on Monday afternoon. The man rescued from the water was last believed to be in critical condition.
After two bodies were recovered from the river on Tuesday, the remaining unaccounted-for person was pulled from the river on Wednesday.
"The barge operator had actually stopped the boat after the collision. Two of the crew members boarded a life vessel and rescued the two that were in the river," according to Sgt. Frank Mehalko with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
At a press conference on Monday afternoon, Richard Policz, the Greene County director of emergency services, said divers and other emergency personnel are now shifting the operation into recovery mode, with hope that they still may find those missing.
"Currently, we're looking at moving to a recovery mode. We've had numerous searches, resources, brought in from four counties and even the state of Maryland, state police helicopter helping us, along with Pennsylvania. We've got multiple sonar units in the water. We've had some divers, we're just not finding anything. That doesn't mean they're not along the bank somewhere. We're looking at that; you'll see helicopters flying over. It's just a tedious process that we're going through right now."
Sources tell KDKA-TV that the pleasure boat was launched from Greene Cove. State police have filed a warrant to search the vehicle and boat trailer located there.
Melanie Miller told KDKA-TV that she saw boats in the river on Sunday night without lights.
"There was music. People looked like they were having fun, people jumping off the boats, swimming. Nobody had on their lights. It's 8:20, and it was getting dark down there," Miller said. This is a busy river. There is barge activity here all of the time, day and night."
The emergency response consisted of officials from Greene and Fayette counties, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.
"Right now, we have divers that are going to be entering the water to check the wreckage and look for any type of victims or anything that they can recover," said Jim Bittner, who leads the Fayette County Swift Water Rescue Team. "We've been doing air searches as well, since we got here. We've also been doing some side-scan sonar on the river, checking for anything that we can find."
Bittner said that the collision is a rare situation and is something he has not seen in his 18 years, adding that all available resources are being deployed to try and find the missing people.
Maryland State Police have also responded to assist crews in the ongoing search mission.
