Tuesday, Oct. 14, 2008

River accident: Doctors reattach teen's hand

18-year-old tells about retrieving severed hand from the Saluda

Two fishermen were trying to retrieve a severed human hand out of 12 feet of Saluda River water Sunday afternoon when a Lexington County sheriff’s deputy looked at Bradley Williams and asked whether he was a good swimmer.

Williams understood what he had to do.

The 18-year-old Midlands Tech student dove into the water and swam to the bottom to retrieve the hand of a 16-year-old boy he had met about 20 minutes earlier.

“It was kind of like feeling your hand when it was asleep,” he said.

The hand belonged to David Coleman, who minutes earlier had been the first teen to try a haphazardly constructed zip line strung between two trees 700 yards upstream from the James R. Metts Boat Landing on Hope Ferry Road.

Late Monday, Coleman was still undergoing surgery to reattach his hand at Duke Medical Center, his mother, Mary Coleman, said. She said surgery had begun at 10:30 p.m. Sunday. The weary mother said there was blood flow to the hand, but she did not know how long he would remain at the hospital.

The West Columbia woman said her son had been flown to Duke by helicopter Sunday night.

Initially, he had been being taken to the emergency room at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston, hospital spokeswoman Sharlene Atkins said.

Williams said neither he nor the other six people at the river saw the hand get severed, but guessed Coleman must have gotten his hand stuck between the nylon rope and the steel cable that ran parallel to it.

Coleman came out of the water screaming, Williams said, and the water around him changed colors.

“He went down the zip line, and when he came up his hand was missing. It was freaky.”

A couple walking along a path from the boat landing to the zip line saw what happened and called 911. The man took off his cloth belt and used it as a tourniquet on Coleman’s arm.

Coleman was able to walk the first part of the path from the river to the boat landing parking lot, but a friend carried him the rest of the way, Williams said.

Stephen Dennis, 50, of Irmo, said he was heading downstream on the Saluda River with a friend after doing some fishing when Lexington County sheriff’s deputies called them over about 2:45 p.m. to help find the severed hand.

Dennis said he quickly spotted the hand in about eight feet of water but couldn’t reach it with his 6-foot fishing rod.

“The water was crystal clear. It was laying on the bottom. I could count five digits.”

That’s when the deputy asked whether Williams was a good swimmer.

After Williams retrieved the hand, Dennis put it in a half-bag of ice he had in his cooler, placing it on top of some plastic he put over the ice so it would stay cool but not freeze. He then gave the bag to a deputy, who drove it to the hospital.

“As clean a cut as it was, they should be able to reattach that hand,” Dennis said. “I hope that kid doesn’t lose his hand.”

Dennis said he and his fishing partner, Doug Branham, saw a group of about five teenagers in the area about 2 p.m. At the time, one teen was up in a large tree, apparently trying to construct the zip line, while the others were standing on the riverbank, he said.

Most of the teens at the zip line didn’t know each other very well, Williams said. He said the line was already up by the time he got there.

“It’s a shocking thing,” Williams said. “It could have been any of us.”

The Lexington County Fire Department cut down the trees and removed the zip line Sunday, spokesman Maj. Larry Shea said.

For generations, rope swings have dangled from tree limbs along the banks of Columbia’s rivers as youths have sought the thrill of flinging themselves into the water.

“Nothing we can do in life is perfectly safe, but it wouldn’t be much fun if it was. The thrill of it is part of it,” said Jay Alley, who grew up on Columbia’s rivers and every year takes about 2,500 youths through his nonprofit organization Canoeing for Kids.

The zip line Coleman used Sunday didn’t cross the water but went downhill and slung the rider out over the water. It was constructed with a half-inch wide nylon rope and a one-eighth-inch diameter braided steel cable between the two trees. A metal bar hung on the line from some D-rings as a handle.

The growth in popularity of for-pay zip lines in the past decade led to professional standards for construction and maintenance of the lines. Many zip line operators, including Carolina Adventure World in Fairfield County, follow the strict guidelines designed by the Professional Ropes Course Operation.

Carolina Adventure World opened its three-stage Blue Sky Zip Line this year. Every cable, connection and harness was designed to handle 26,000 pounds, the pulleys 14,000 pounds and the harnesses 5,500 pounds, according to Beth Reid, who helps manage the Carolina Adventure World course.

Every connection is inspected daily before the zip line is used, Reid said. Most importantly, everyone who rides the zip line is hooked into a harness with double connections to the line.

Customers are instructed not to touch the cable. They also must wear helmets and tuck long hair into the helmets or their clothing.

Reach Beam at (803) 771-8405. Staff writers Rick Brundrett and Joey Holleman contributed.