Man injured in boat collision 
Rescue crews work from the top of the Atlantic Beach high-rise bridge and below Tuesday evening to remove an injured boat operator from his sport fishing boat. The vessel collided with a bridge piling, and the man was impaled on the steering wheel column. (Dylan Ray photo)
NEWS-TIMES
Published: Wednesday, November 18, 2009 3:05 PM EST
HELEN OUTLAND
ATLANTIC BEACH — One man remains in critical condition at Pitt County Memorial Hospital after the 20-foot sportfishing boat he was piloting crashed into a concrete piling on the Atlantic Beach high-rise bridge around 4:15 Tuesday afternoon.
Passengers Larry Lender and Anson Jacobs sustained non-life threatening injuries.
The investigation has been turned over to N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission officials and no details were available as of presstime.
Investigators are not sure what caused the boat to hit the bridge. The boat carrying the fishermen was traveling west on the Intracoastal Waterway in Bogue Sound.
According to scene commander Atlantic Beach Fire Chief Adam Snyder, the operator was impaled on the steering wheel column on the boat’s console as a result of the impact.
Beth Henry of Atlantic Beach, who had come to the rescue command post set up in the Channel Marker Restaurant parking lot, said her husband Keith was returning by boat from a hunting trip on the western end of Bogue Sound and arrived on the accident scene within minutes after the crash happened.
“He called me from his cell phone saying he was at the bridge, there had been a terrible accident and he had pulled some people from the water,” she said. “He said it was bad.”
According to Mrs. Henry, her husband, a local Scout master, is trained in rescue and first aid and may have been able to offer some assistance to the injured men before rescuers arrived.
A joint rescue effort by Atlantic Beach and Morehead City fire and rescue departments had rescuers staged on the bridge above the crash site and on the water in rescue boats.
Teams on the bridge lowered equipment needed by rescuers below to separate the injured boat operator from the steering column and to address his injuries.
EastCare medical rescue helicopter was called in and waited for the injured man on the lawn of Carteret General Hospital in Morehead City.
Meanwhile a Coast Guard helicopter also arrived and circled the area offering assistance with flying the injured boater out, if needed.
The injured operator and two passengers were transferred from the damaged vessel to rescue vessels and then were brought to shore where they were transferred to ambulances waiting at the docks behind the Showboat Motel on the Atlantic Beach causeway.
One lane of traffic was closed temporarily for northbound traffic to Morehead City and was reopened shortly after the rescue was accomplished.
Fire Chief Snyder said the joint rescue operation between his department and Morehead City Fire and EMS went extremely well and pointed to a recent training exercise that likely proved timely.
“No less than a month ago we had spent three days practicing water rescue at or near the high-rise bridge,” he said. “One of the scenarios included in that training was exactly this type of incident. The execution of this rescue went perfectly.”
MHC ... boating accident 
