(Undated)– There were two near drownings Tuesday, July 4th, on West Lake Okoboji.
The first one took place a little after 4:00 pm when crews were called to the Miller’s Bay area. Chris Yungbluth of Arnolds Park-Okoboji Fire and Rescue says the person involved in that incident was identified as 21-year-old Randy Vilayphone of Sioux Falls who was recovered from a depth of about 17 feet…
“When we were en route over there they could tell us exactly where the victim was and they had made several attempts, bystanders had, to try and recover him, but due to the depth and other conditions they weren’t able to get down to him to be able to rescue him. We ended up deploying divers from the Lakes Area Fire Rescue boat and were able to recover him within a matter of minutes, able to get him up to the boat and start EMS efforts to try to resuscitate the victim and then transport him to shore where we met with Lakes Regional Healthcare personnel to continue those resuscitation efforts.”
Yungbluth says Vilayphone was then transported to Lakes Regional Healthcare and was then transferred to a Sioux Falls hospital. He says Vilayphone had been on a vessel and how he ended up in the water remains under investigation.
Yungbluth says the second incident took place around 7:30 pm at the Arnolds Park Public Beach near Preservation Plaza. He says a victim, identified as 22-year-old Atem Kiir, also of Sioux Falls, was found face down in the water…
“That young man was attempting to swim out to a swim buoy kind of a ways out from the beach and got into trouble, became fatigued. The person he was swimming with was able to kind of get a hold of him and start helping him back toward shore but then they became fatigued as well and were concerned about their own safety and so they had to kind of swim in by themselves from there and another person from shore was able to take over and bring him the rest of the way into the beach and then they started resuscitation efforts and then the police department arrived and they continued resuscitation efforts including application of an AED and then our EMS crew arrived and took over care from there and transferred him to Lakes Regional’s paramedics transferred him to the hospital. And I believe he was also transferred out by ambulance to Avera-McKennan.”
Yungbluth thanks the various agencies that assisted them in their quick responses…
“At Miller’s Bay we had a lot of help with different fire and rescue teams including ours and Milford’s, Lakes Regional Healthcare, and then law enforcement was there to help control the scene including the DNR Lake Patrol, Dickinson County Emergency Management, Iowa State Patrol, and of course the Communications Center that takes the calls and gets folks dispatched to where they need to be. And the second one, a lot of the same folks were there. Just didn’t fall in Milford’s district so otherwise everyone else was there the same, including Arnolds Park Police Department.”
