Search Continues For Missing Tuber In Boulder
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) - Boulder Fire and Rescue is looking for a man who went missing while tubing the high-running Boulder Creek on Monday.
A 31-year-old male was with a friend at the Millennium Harvest House Hotel when he decided to go tubing, officials said. The man traveled down the creek to the Boulder Community Foothills Hospital at 47th Street before losing contact. His friend was longboarding beside him on the bike path.
The search area extends from 47th Street to 55th Street, and crews did not find anything on Monday. They were called off the river around 11:30 p.m.
Search crews returned on Tuesday at 8 a.m. A team of about 28 people, including divers, have been searching the creek and banks in the initial search area.
Police and search crews remain optimistic.
"What we hope is that we will find him. We hope that he got out of the water on his own last night and that we just simply don't know where he is. Maybe he went somewhere and we're hoping to find him alive. We are doing a rescue operation, it is a potential recovery operation as well because we don't know what his status is right now," said Boulder Police spokeswoman Kim Kobel.
Police also said the water is moving about seven mph and is as deep as 10 feet in some places. Despite the heavy rain police say the water levels are not unusual for this time of year.
Boulder Creek is flowing at about 438 cubic feet per second, according to Dan Barber, deputy director of Boulder Office of Emergency Management. Tubing on the creek is usually banned when the flow starts to reach to 700 cfs or above.
"It's rolling pretty good but it does this every year," Barber said.
Barber said he expects snowmelt will mean the creek will hit the 700 mark sometime in the near future.
Crews were expected to search until 1 p.m. when they will reassess.
