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Airboats crash, 7 injured - 2 critically

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Anonymous

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:( Posted by WaterLizard

Jul 1, 9:21 PM

Airboats crash, critically injuring 2

BY J.D. GALLOP
FLORIDA TODAY

MELBOURNE, FL -- Two people were critically injured and five others
received minor injuries in an airboat collision on Lake Washington,
authorities said.

Thursday's accident happened about 1:50 p.m. on the western edge of
the lake near the St. Johns River as the two boats maneuvered through
a blind curve in high grass.

"The two kids were ejected," said Kat Kelley, spokeswoman for the
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. The driver of the airboat
jumped off the vessel as the collision happened, and another
passenger fell toward the boat's propeller cage, Kelley said.

For the next few moments, the airboat passengers struggled to high
ground and waited for help, which arrived in the form of a military
and a civilian-police helicopter and watercraft. The aircraft carried
the most-seriously injured to hospitals.

"We landed in the water. They were both cut up pretty bad," John
Hankins, a tactical flight officer with the sheriff's aviation
unit. "The victims were on both sides of the bank," he said.

The boats were submerged partially in the canal where the head-on
collision happened.

"It didn't look too violent, but it was bad enough," said 16-year-old
Jeremy Miller, who rode out with his uncle, Dan Hite, to pick up
three of those injured.

Hite, the 27-year-old manager of Camp Holly, brought a young girl, an
older man and a boy with scratches on his face back to the Lake
Washington boat ramp.

The boy, guided by two paramedics, limped to a waiting ambulance
where he and the others were seated and given water.

"They were roughed up," said Hite, part of a response team of private
citizens called on to help with boating accidents and other
disasters. "Whatever they saw was pretty traumatizing."
 
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