Tri-Cities medical specialist dies on remote OR raft trip. ‘The world lost a great guy’
A Kennewick man died and two other people were injured on a rafting trip through a remote area of northeast Oregon.
Union County Search & Rescue in Oregon said that the top of a dead tree fell early Wednesday morning on tents where eight rafters were camped along the banks of the Grand Ronde River.
Cory Peppard, 61, an advanced registered nurse practitioner anesthetist at Trios Health in Kennewick, could not be saved, despite the efforts of others camping with him, according to Search & Rescue.
The tree also injured the legs of a 54-year-old woman in the same tent and hit the head of a 23-year-old woman sleeping in a nearby tent.
Viola Child of Kennewick posted on her Facebook account that she was the woman sharing a tent with Peppard and that the other woman injured was his niece.
The niece likely also would have been killed if the tree had not hit a camp chair near her head. The chair was crushed and reduced the force of the impact on her head, according to Search & Rescue.
She had a concussion, cuts and fractures near her eye.
The eight rafters had set up camp five miles downstream of the confluence of the Wallowa and Grande Ronde Rivers in Northeast Oregon after rafting from Minam, Ore., that day, according to Child.
“Cory had a great day rafting and fishing,” she posted on Facebook. “We stopped for the night and set up camp. A great evening with good food and good friends.”
Skies were clear and there was no wind when they went to bed that night.
What happened next was horrific, she posted.
“We woke to the sound of a tree snapping off and crashing down on us in our tents,” Child posted.
Those camping with them were able to lift the 14-inch-diameter tree top off the two tents.
They worked for three hours trying to save Peppard without success, she posted.
The rafters had a Garmin InReach satellite communicator that they used contact the Union County 911 Dispatch Center for help and provide their location.
But their location proved challenging.
Difficult OR river rescue
Because reaching them required 15 miles of river travel, a helicopter was requested from the Oregon Army National Guard.
In the meantime, a Life Flight helicopter attempted to take La Grande Fire Department paramedics to the scene, but could not find a landing area near the camp and returned to La Grande.
At the same time, a team of Union and Wallowa counties Search & Rescue swift water rescue technicians and La Grande paramedics left from Highway 82 at Minam to float the 15 miles to the camp.
The trip took two hours on the water, and they arrived at the same time the Life Flight helicopter had returned and found a landing area 1 1/2 miles downstream from the camp at an area known as Pine Bar.
The National Guard Blackhawk medivac helicopter also arrived from Salem, but the trees were too dense to lift the two injured people out.
Instead, they were taken by a Search & Rescue boat to Pine Bar and transferred to two medivac helicopters at 11:30 a.m.
They were taken to hospitals in Lewiston, Idaho, and Walla Walla, Wash.
The rescue team escorted the remainder of the rafting group and Peppard’s body 22 miles downstream to the nearest takeout at Powwatka Bridge in Wallowa County about eight miles south of the Washington state line.
Throughout the response a Bureau of Land Management river ranger provided detailed descriptions of the river to the incident commander and a sheriff’s office patrol sergeant was stationed on a ridge above the water to help relay communications, if needed.
Child posted her thanks to rescuers, saying “They were all so kind. They were amazing. We are all heartbroken, traumatized and numb with shock.”
Cory Peppard remembered
Friends and co-workers were remembering Peppard this week on social media.
According to Peppard’s Facebook page, he earned his bachelor’s of science in nursing at Seattle University and studied nurse anesthesia at University of North Florida.
He had served in the U.S. Marine Corps and also was an Air Force flight nurse before becoming a nurse anesthetist.
An Air Force veteran posted, “Corey was a really great and genuine soul. The world lost a great guy.”
“You had to know Cory Peppard up close and personal to understand his wit and know his character,” posted a fellow former Marine, who remembered a motorcycle ride with Peppard.
“I was so lucky to have met you and had you in my life,” posted a Trios nurse.
Others reminisced about Peppard teaching them how to win a jump ball in high school basketball and counseling them about dating the wrong people.
“He was an AMAZING MAN. Always with a smile and a corny joke,” posted another friend.
