Date: Fri 21-Jun-1996

Publication: Bee

Author: ANDYG

Quick Words:

Lake

Full Text:

Marine Police Officers Rescue Three Fishermen

B Y A NDREW G OROSKO

The Lake Zoar Marine Police came to the rescue of three fishermen whose canoe

capsized June 16 on Lake Zoar. The three were in peril of drowning, according

to Lake Zoar Marine Police Chief Joseph Steinfeld.

Chief Steinfeld said June 17 that he and Greg Saad, a Lake Zoar Marine Police

safety patrol officer, were traveling upriver on the 11-mile-long body of

water at about 11 am on June 16 when they overtook a canoe that also was

traveling upriver.

Just after the 16-foot-long marine police patrol boat passed the 12-foot-long

canoe, the chief and Officer Saad heard a shout for help and then a splashing

sound. Looking back, they saw that the overloaded canoe had capsized and the

three men who had been in it were struggling to say afloat by grasping onto

buoyant seat cushions and a floating picnic cooler, Chief Steinfeld said,

noting that the boaters had no life vests.

As the patrol boat moved in for a rescue, the marine police threw the three

men a large life ring for buoyancy. All three were rescued without injuries

and brought into the patrol boat, the chief said.

Of the fast response to the men is distress, Chief Steinfeld termed it "just

an instantaneous type of thing."

The capsizing took place just downriver of the Silver Bridge in Sandy Hook. It

happened in the area where several massive cut-stone pillars, which formerly

carried railroad tracks, jut up out of the river near Pootatuck Park.

The three boaters went into the water on the east side of the river, about 30

feet from shore, in an area where the water is quite deep, according to the

chief.

Chief Steinfeld identified the canoe operator as Ronald R. LaPlante, 41, of

Waterbury. In the canoe with him were two of his nephews: Adam Brunelli, about

18 years old, from Waterbury, and Ron Weaver of Naugatuck, who is in his early

20s, Chief Steinfeld said.

The canoe was propelled by a 5« horsepower gasoline engine. It was seriously

overloaded by the men's weight and the various objects in it, according to

Chief Steinfeld. Putting that amount of weight in that small a boat violated

the rules of common sense, he said.

Mr LaPlante was the best swimmer of the three; one of the passengers could

basically only tread water, and the second passenger wasn't capable of

swimming, Chief Steinfeld said. "You never saw three individuals so grateful

to be alive."

Chief Steinfeld estimated that between the time the marine patrol passed by

the three boaters and the time they were rescued, about one minute had

elapsed.

At the time of the incident, the sky was clear, the air temperature was in the

80s and the water temperature was in the 70s, the chief said. There were

one-foot swells on the river.

The Lake Zoar Marine Police unit was organized to promote water safety.