Bay Area man without life jacket identified in American River drowning in Sacramento County

A 32-year-old Hayward man, who was not wearing a life jacket, died in a drowning Saturday in the American River near Rancho Cordova, authorities said.

Kelvin Manabat Felarca died in the drowning Saturday, the Sacramento County Coroner’s Office confirmed Tuesday.

Felarca’s body was recovered about 100 yards downstream from where he went under the water and didn’t come up, said Battalion Chief Parker Wilbourn, a spokesman for the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District. A Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office dive team recovered the man’s body.

Wilbourn said Felarca was not wearing a life jacket when he was last seen playing in the water near the El Manto River Access, also known as the Clay Banks. The Metro Fire spokesman also said Saturday’s incident, before it became a recovery operation, was the seventh water rescue reported to the agency in a week.

“We continue to tell people to wear life jackets, and they don’t,” Wilbourn told The Sacramento Bee on Tuesday. “The water is still cold (despite this summer’s triple-digit weather). There are areas in the river moving faster than others.”

Wilbourn confirmed Metro Fire has responded to 54 water rescues from May through July this year. In that same time period, the agency responded 43 water rescues last year and 33 in 2022.

KCRA 3 first reported on Monday the number of water rescues Metro Fire has responded to and the overall number of drownings throughout the county.

On Tuesday, Sacramento County Coroner Rosa Vega told The Bee there have been 20 drowning deaths reported in the county. In the same time period last year, there were 26 drowning deaths in Sacramento County; there were 38 total reported drownings in 2023.

Wilbourn urged those heading to the region’s rivers to wear a life jackets and choose to rent a durable life raft to float down the river. He said too many people continue to purchase their own inflatable rafts, which “aren’t that much better than an inflatable for your pool.”

There are plenty of hazards in the river that can puncture or entangle “a cheap raft” and lead to a water rescue, Wilbourn said.