Body Recovered From Lake : Search Still On for Other Victims

CONVICT LAKE, Calif. —  The first of seven drowning victims was pulled from this picturesque, iced-over fishing lake in the eastern Sierra Nevada just before 11 a.m. today by rescue crews working from helicopters and a special airboat that skims across the treacherous surface.

Mono County Sheriff’s Lt. Terry Padilla said the victim was an adult male whose body was found pinned against the underside of the ice, which broke through Monday while teen-agers were on a holiday outing. The victim was not immediately identified.

Rescuers spotted the body shortly after a team of divers resumed the search for victims this morning. They broke a hole in the ice and hoisted the body into the special boat, which had been brought to the lake from Truckee, near Lake Tahoe. Recovery efforts that began Monday afternoon had been suspended at dusk because of cold, darkness and thin ice. Three of the victims were teen-age wards at Camp O’Neal, a privately run treatment home for troubled youths. The youths had hiked onto the frozen lake Monday during an outing, broke through thin ice and disappeared despite rescue efforts. The missing boys were a 13-year-old from Redlands and a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old from Tulare County. Their names were not released.

Mono County Sheriff Martin Strelneck said two of the adult victims, Dave Meyers and Randy Porter, were camp counselors who presumably had tried to rescue the teen-agers. The other victims were two rescue workers who also became trapped beneath the ice--paramedic Vidar Anderson of Tom’s Place and Clay Cutter, a U.S. Forest Service snow ranger.

At mid-morning today a firefighter who survived several minutes in the frigid water, Chris Baitx, was released from the hospital in Mammoth Lakes, about five miles north of here. Last night an unidentified 16-year-old boy who pulled himself from the water was treated and released.

The search for bodies resumed about 10 a.m. with the help of a helicopter from China Lake Naval Weapons Station. It circled the lake and dropped buoys and a green smoke canister over the spot where the boys and their would-be rescuers had slipped beneath the ice. The airboat from the Truckee Fire District and a special diving team from Washoe County, Nev., then moved onto the ice to recover the first body and begin looking for others.

Gathered on the shore were anxious friends of Cutter, who lived in a Forest Service house beside the lake and whose wife, Terry, witnessed the tragedy. Cutter had fallen into the lake and disappeared after running to the aid of the victims. “He was a very brave man,” said family friend Marsha Reiten. “He would do anything to save a person’s life.”

Strelneck said that in his 26 years on the job he did not recall anyone ever falling through the ice at Convict Lake, a 7,500-foot elevation glacial lake just off U.S. 395. It is a popular spot in winter for fishing, ice skating and sightseeing. He said the chances of finding all the victims are slim given the deep water and dangerous conditions.

The rescue began this morning under clear, wind-free skies, but by noon clouds had appeared. “We think it will be a very difficult operation,” Strelneck said.