Body recovered after canoe capsizes on Valley lake

WASILLA — Rescue divers on Tuesday evening recovered the body of a 67-year-old Wasilla man who drowned in Finger Lake Monday after his canoe overturned.

Troopers identified the man as Edgar Curtis of Wasilla. His son, 30-year-old Gary Curtis, also of Wasilla, was also in the canoe but survived after nearby boaters pulled him from the water not long after the boat flipped.

By then, his father had slipped below the surface.

The wake from a passing boat capsized the canoe as the men paddled in the lake, troopers said. Both men were wearing auto-flotation safety vests that did not self-inflate.

Gary Curtis, an Anchorage police officer, was in good condition Tuesday after he was transported by medics to Mat-Su Regional Medical Center for hypothermia and exhaustion, according to Ken Barkley, deputy director of Mat-Su Borough emergency services.

Finger Lake is near Wasilla, a 362-acre lake that's popular for summer recreation and heavily developed with homes on its shores.

Barkley said word that the boaters were in distress came in at about 5 p.m. Monday. The incident took place off the far shore of an island near Finger Lake's public boat launch.

The area where the boat capsized is not in a no-wake zone, said trooper Dugger Cook. The accident remains under investigation, Cook said.

Tempy Larew, who lives on the south side of the lake, said she called 911 Monday when she "heard this awful screaming."

Larew said two men working on her yard borrowed a pontoon boat from a neighbor and motored out to the man flailing desperately in the water. He was brought safely to rescuers on shore. The other man was gone.

"They found a couple of hats and a pair of sunglasses," she said. "That was it."

Larew estimated the water temperature at around 60 degrees. The elder Curtis went into the murky lake where it's an estimated 15 to 20 feet deep to a muddy bottom covered by trees and debris.

The Mat-Su Borough dive team responded to the lake and searched for the missing man until 11 p.m. but found no sign of him. They resumed searching Tuesday morning.

Volunteers from MAT-SAR Canine Search Team, the Alaska Dive Search Rescue and Recovery Team, and Mat-Su emergency services personnel assisted with the search Tuesday, troopers said.

Troopers did not provide additional information about the self-inflating life jackets the men wore Monday.

The suspender-style jackets are sometimes seen as preferable by anglers or boaters because they're less bulky than conventional jackets. Generally, the jackets are inflated by a device — either a water-dissolved "pill" or a pressure-activated mechanism — that punctures a carbon dioxide canister and releases compressed air to fill an internal bladder, according to Ted Sensenbrenner, assistant director of boating safety for the national nonprofit Boat U.S. Foundation for Boating Safety and Clean Water.

The jackets come with backup pull tabs and oral inflation tubes, Sensenbrenner said. His group encourages people to test their jackets annually and check for wear before outings. The foundation also recommends that only strong swimmers wear them and no one under 16, because of the skills needed if the vests for some reason don't automatically inflate.

The drowning marked the third on Finger Lake in the 20 years Larew has lived there, she said.

Most recently, a 29-year-old Wasilla man died after a small boat he and two others — including a child — were in capsized during an impromptu late night camping trip in July 2010.

Reporter Chris Klint contributed to this report. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story said volunteers from the Alaska Mountain Rescue Group assisted in the search. The group did not participate in the efforts.