Firefighters respond to rafting incident

Bend firefighters were called to the Colorado Avenue dam on the Deschutes River on Saturday afternoon, after someone reported that a person on a raft washed over the dam. When the crew arrived, they saw that bystanders had helped the rafter ashore but two good Samaritans were still in the river. The Fire Department used a “ladder rescue technique that we have used and trained on several times” to rescue the two individuals from the river, according to a department press release.

The rafter sustained minor injuries and was not taken to the hospital. The Fire ...more