Man presumed dead after raft incident

A 37-year-old man from Hungry Horse is missing and was presumed dead by Sunday evening after searchers failed to find him in the Flathead River.

A group of seven rafters were floating on the river between the Blankenship Bridge and Coram when Robert Alsop IV, who was not wearing a life jacket, jumped into the water about three-quarters of a mile below the bridge to retrieve an oar that had been dropped into the river, Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.

Alsop went into the river around 5 p.m. Other rafters called emergency officials at 5:44 p.m., and the sheriff's department's dive team and the North Valley Search and Rescue team responded. The searchers had failed to locate Alsop by 9:15 p.m. on Sunday.

One rafter told deputies Alsop was a good swimmer and was last seen floating down the river before other rafters lost sight of him, Curry said. All but one person left on board the raft at one time or another jumped in to help Alsop, and one person actually got a hold of Alsop but was unable to bring him to the surface, he said.

"Everything's still running high," Curry said following dive operations he participated in on Monday. "It's murky, it's cold and it's running fast. We actually have stopped the diving operations because we dove what we thought was feasible or safe to dive."

Searchers continued to search the river on Monday from the shore and from boats, at least to provide closure for the family, Curry said. But with the fast river currents, recovery will be difficult, he said.

"If he stayed in the main channel, he could conceivably get a long ways downstream," Curry said, noting visibility for divers is often only about two feet.