Islanders up for honor

by Larry Austin
Grand Island Dispatch, April 18, 2008

Patty and Barry Arbogast in the front yard of their East River Road home.
In the background, 100 yards off shore, two boaters in a canoe were rescued
by Barry and his son, Cory, after capsizing. (photo by Larry Austin)

Patty Arbogast’s husband Barry isn’t looking for an award, but he may get one anyway after he and his son, Cory, pulled two drowning men from the Niagara River Saturday.

“Barry doesn’t make much of a big deal about it,” Patty said of her husband’s actions. “He keeps saying, “ ‘Everybody would have done the same thing.’ ”

“Barry said to me the other night, ‘I don’t understand what the big deal is.’ ” Patty continued. “ ‘Volunteer firemen, paramedics, these people do this every day.’ ”

Those same first responders on Grand Island may recognize the Arbogasts. Ray Pauley, public information officer of the Grand Island Fire Co., said the Arbogasts are under consideration for the 2008 fire prevention commendation given every year at the GIFC open house in October “because of their heroic actions” in rescuing two boaters stranded in the Niagara River when their canoe capsized in turbulent water.

Saturday just after 11 a.m., the Arbogast family was enjoying coffee in the dining room, where the front window offers a view of the east channel of the Niagara River. Daughter Lea was home from New York City with her boyfriend, Maden Badu, and was peering out at the river with a telescope the family uses to watch loons and swans in the water.

The family noticed two canoeists paddling in what Barry estimated were 12 to 18-inch waves and windy conditions. At about 100 yards off shore, Barry said, the canoe tipped over, sending the men into the water. The canoe was upside down in deep water and the boaters were clinging to the side of the boat.

The family ran from the table, they said, to call for help while Barry and son, Cory, left the house in their bare feet and shorts looking for a boat to lend a hand. They jumped fences along the shore to find a rowboat.

Had the family not been looking out the window at that exact moment, the outcome could have been far different.

“They’re extremely lucky,” Barry Arbogast said of the boaters. “Once they were in the water, the canoe being upside down and with it being so wavy, they weren’t very easy to see.”

Patty likewise is convinced that once the canoeists drifted further away from shore, their chances of being noticed were slim.

“If we hadn’t seen them, someone else may have just thought they were a chunk of ice or something. They were really lucky that we just happened to be looking out the window,” Patty said.

After finding a rowboat, the father and son rowed in advance of the canoe and pulled the two men to the boat and returned to shore, with the men holding on to the side of the rowboat. Cory held one virtually unconscious victim by the coat, keeping the man’s head above the surface of the water. Patty said the man’s hands were frozen in a clench by the time they reached shore.

Rescuers pull two boaters from the frigid Niagara River Saturday near
East River and Stony Point roads. (photo by Maden Badu)

Meanwhile, Lea and Maden Badu directed the GIFC emergency crews and Erie County Sheriff’s deputies a half mile down the road from the Arbogast home where the boat had drifted. GIFC firefighters Chuck Barlinger and Gary Roesch, and Erie County Sheriff’s Department Deputies Warren Luick and Terry Guenot, helped the Arbogasts pull the victims from the water, where they were treated for hypothermia and transported to Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center.

The victims, 34-year-old Brian Mahoney of Buffalo and 36-year-old Charles L. Ferachi of Lockport, were in the water approximately 25 minutes.

Still, Barry Arbogast reserves the accolades for the people who make their living helping the community on a daily basis, rather than for himself.

“It just kind of blows me away,” Barry said of the attention. “There are people that spend two, three nights a week training and on call, helping people, volunteering all the time. This just kind of landed in our lap. We did the best we could with it, but it’s not really a big deal.”

“But you did it, Bar,” Patty said. “I give them more credit than they give themselves.”