A Utah man who died in a rafting accident at Colorado’s Dinosaur National Monument has been identified as a 27-year Salt Lake City Fire Department veteran.
Michael Harp, 54, was part of a party on a private allowed rafting excursion down the Green River in the Canyon of Lodore around 4 p.m. Thursday when their boat became caught on a rock in the rapid known as Hells Half Mile, according to the US National Park Service.
Monument employees responded to the rafting disaster and discovered that Harp was gone and presumed to be pinned beneath the raft. The rafting group freed the boat from the boulder, but Harp remained unresponsive and “drifted downriver.”
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Harp was wearing a life jacket but had lost it by the time the party unpinned the boat, according to the NPS.
River Patrol Rangers initiated a search for Harper. Harp’s body was discovered about 10 miles downstream by Adrift commercial rafting guides at 7:45 a.m. on Friday.
His body was transported to the Moffat County coroner. No other information concerning Harp’s death was immediately available.
Harp, a second-generation firefighter from Sandy, Utah, worked as a fire captain for the Salt Lake City Fire Department, according to a social media post on Saturday.
He was a 27-year veteran of the agency, following in his father’s footsteps, and had been deployed to Ground Zero following 9/11, according to the department.
“Captain Michael Harp dedicated his life to the service of not only the citizens of Salt Lake City, but also his fellow firefighters,” according to the department. “His legacy of service, leadership, compassion, and contagious laughter will forever be remembered by all who knew him.”
Dinosaur National Monument spans 210,000 acres spanning Colorado and Utah. While best known for a quarry containing preserved dinosaur fossils, whitewater rafters from all over the world are drawn to the monument’s Green and Yampa rivers, which cut through its legendary canyons.
According to the National Park Service, flow rates in the Canyon of Lodore segment of the Green River averaged 4,700 cubic feet per second in the days leading up to the catastrophe.
Source: FOX News