Devils Churn is an ocean-worn crack in a massive basalt flow created by a volcano 37 million years ago.
Seventy-five yards wide at its mouth, the chute slices 200 yards inland, narrowing to just three or four feet before ending at the base of Cape Perpetua towering above.
The churn’s wild waves draw thousands of people a year to the Forest Service day-use area. Visitors can view the action from platforms above or walk down a long, paved path to a series of steps leading to the basalt and the water’s edge.
Steve Allen, 67, of Walnut Creek, California, was visiting there Sept. 9 with his wife, Linda.
They walked the path to the bottom. Steve Allen told Linda he was going ahead to check things out, picking his way east around a corner on the south edge of the chute. He got to within 30 feet of the end.
Eyewitnesses say Allen was at the edge of the churn when he turned to see if his wife was following. It was then that he lost his footing. Unable to regain his balance, they told YachatsNews, Allen appeared to make a split-second decision to leap 3- to 4-feet across the chasm. He landed on the rocks, but slipped off and tumbled 25-30 feet into the water.
In that terrifying moment, for the dozens of onlookers a late-summer visit to one of the coast’s most scenic spots turned deadly. The prolonged but ultimately futile efforts to save Allen left emotional scars and raised questions about the response and protocols of public agencies.
When Allen fell, nearby tourists frantically organized a rescue attempt. For the next 20 minutes, eight bystanders tried to keep Allen afloat until first responders could arrive. They formed a line, holding the person in front of them at the edge of the chute.
A man from Montana perched on a lower ledge and dangled a makeshift line of dog leashes, belts and clothing to Allen as he floated below, pounded by the waves.
Santos Tovar of Bakersfield, California, was second in line, holding onto the rope. Tovar’s two sons were behind, holding him. Tovar said Allen remained calm despite the dire situation.
“He didn’t flail. He didn’t panic,” he said. “He immediately went on his back. He knew what to do.”
The makeshift line broke once as a large wave hit Allen. Tovar’s wife, Dulce, raced back along the rocks asking others for their belts to construct a new line.
Andy Nelson of Portland was fifth in the row of helpers. After a few minutes he sent his son, Evan, 21, racing back over the rocks and up the path where he alerted a Forest Service volunteer to call 9-1-1. He returned with a ranger who carried a rope and small life ring.
By then Allen had been in the water an estimated 10 minutes. He had gashes in his forehead, either from the fall or from banging on the rocks on an incoming tide.
Rescuers above were talking to Allen the entire time.
They knew they couldn’t lift Allen, who weighed 155 pounds, the 25-30 feet out of the chute. They were just trying to keep his upper body above the water until more help and better equipment arrived.
They urged Allen to get his arm, shoulder and head through the ranger’s life ring. He tried, but the ring was too small.
“He was fully aware and he could see us and the rope,” said Marty Gaughan of Portland, who was helping keep Allen afloat. “Sometimes he had the rope and sometimes he had the ring. But he couldn’t hold on.”
The Yachats Rural Fire Protection District got the first dispatch of a man in the water at 2:23 p.m. The ambulance left within two minutes. Yachats activated a specialized Lincoln County rope team at 2:25 p.m.
At 2:26 the U.S. Coast Guard in North Bend, 70 miles south, launched a helicopter with a rescue swimmer aboard. At the same time a motor lifeboat raced out from Newport.
The Yachats ambulance arrived at the Devils Churn Day Use Area six minutes after it left the station four miles to the north. Two paramedics were aboard. A third followed in a truck. The rope team was not yet on the scene.
By then Allen had been in the 52-degree water an estimated 20 minutes.
And then conflict arose.
***
While the bystanders tried to keep Allen alive, others were gathered near the bottom of the steps comforting Linda Allen.
They were anxious, then angry at the rescue response.
Paramedics on the coast are trained to walk to the scene in pairs when responding to rescues in treacherous places, according to Yachats Fire Chief Frankie Petrick. That’s to make sure that one of them does not fall, creating a distraction for the partner who would have to stop to help or have no backup if he proceeded alone.
“That’s exactly what they should have done,” Petrick said. “You want to get there safely.”
The two Yachats paramedics walked down the path, which takes 3½ minutes – and then toward the east end of the chute. Timed this week, it takes 2 minutes more to get to the east end of the chute.
“We were saying, ‘Hurry, he’s still alive,’” said Jill Wilson of Keizer, who had come to Devils Churn with Marty and Diane Gaughan to spread the ashes of a friend.
The paramedics, wearing flotation devices and each with a “throw bag” of rope, went to the south side of the chute.
Some of the bystanders yelled at them to throw their ropes into the water so that Allen could grab ahold.
Nelson told YachatsNews that he believes by the time the paramedics got there Allen had turned face down and had drowned.
Tovar and Gaughan believe that Allen was still alive, or had a chance to be revived if he somehow could have been pulled from the water.
Tovar feels the paramedics were poorly equipped for the situation.
“We tried to hold him up until rescue gets here and thinking they’ll have the right equipment,” Tovar said. “When those guys walked around the corner he was still alive.”
But Tovar and Gaughan said the Yachats responders looked into the chute and apparently decided it was too late or unsafe to proceed. “One of them just looked across at me and shook his head,” said Tovar.
Tovar is back at work in Bakersfield but still seething over what he felt should have been a more robust response.
“These guys didn’t come down there with intent,” he said. “This guy’s life mattered … then to see these guys come down and do nothing, it bothers the heck out of me.”
At that point some of the bystanders both from the rescue group and the others with Linda Allen were surrounding and yelling at the paramedics, who had not deployed the additional ropes.
Allen said not using the throw bags “is what accelerated everything.”
The tourists turned rescuers had been running on hope and adrenaline for a half an hour. The sudden letdown was like a punch to the gut.
“By then I knew Steve was gone,” Linda Allen said, “but I hoped they could recover the body.”
***
Petrick said the Yachats paramedics realized shortly after arrival there was nothing they could do. They feared the crowd would turn on them, especially while they were close to the water. So they called Oregon State Police. A Forest Service ranger helped escort them back up the path.
Petrick said the paramedics had to make decisions based on their training and knowledge of the area.
“We have to ask ourselves ‘Am I going to be able to fix this situation or will I become part of the problem,’” she said.
Petrick said her paramedics were being berated for something they felt they couldn’t fix – and at one point thought they were being urged to jump into the water.
“My crew endured a lot of name-calling,” Petrick told the district board during a regularly scheduled monthly meeting Monday. “It was not a good situation.”
Andy Parker, the Newport Fire Department member who oversees the rope rescue team, said his crew showed up after the paramedics but also realized quickly they would be on a recovery – not a rescue – mission.
Additionally, he said, the local teams are not trained in rough water rescues. That’s the Coast Guard’s purview.
“We are not water trained,” he said. “We’re a high-angle rope rescue team,” designed to pluck people from cliffs and ravines.
In fact, the ropes team had trained at Devils Churn 4-5 years ago, Parker said.
“That site is probably the most complicated technical rescue site in the county,” he said. “It’s extremely dangerous, hence the name.”
What makes the situation more traumatic, say Parker and Petrick, is that many visitors expect the same emergency response to a remote, rural area that they might get in Portland or the San Francisco Bay area.
“This is not like TV where people coming piling out of a fire truck,” Parker said. “One of the big challenges in this county is that we don’t have big staffing. They were lucky that Yachats (which had two firefighter/paramedics and an administrative assistant on duty) wasn’t on another call.”
Parker said his ropes team members were coming from Newport and as far as Lincoln City, 45 minutes and more than an hour respectively from Devils Churn.
When they arrived, they set up high above the churn and lowered a basket for a potential body recovery. The Coast Guard rescue swimmer and another paramedic walked along the water below trying to spot Allen’s body.
***
Steve and Linda Allen were staying in Gleneden Beach when they decided to visit Cape Perpetua. They wanted to be back at their timeshare to watch the sunset and then head to Central Oregon the next day.
“We knew high tide was at 3:16,” she said. “We had lunch in the car and then went down …”
That evening, after everyone but a fire chaplain and park ranger had left, Linda Allen stayed at Devils Churn until the sunset at 7:37 p.m.
“That was peace for me – that he and I were watching that sunset together,” she said. “And after that they took me back.”
Allen wants an after-action review of the multi-agency response to her husband’s drowning.
She praises the bystanders’ attempts to keep her husband alive: “They thought they could save him, but they couldn’t do it on their own.”
She hopes a review will determine if the response was appropriate and if the agencies had the right equipment and personnel.
“I don’t want this to happen to another family,” she said.
It is unclear if there will be such a review. Parker’s rope team debriefed that night before leaving. Petrick has talked to her three responders and met this week with Siuslaw National Forest managers to discuss the incident.
The Siuslaw National Forest officials said Wednesday they will work with Oregon State Parks to add warning signs at the end of the trail and is considering adding a cell phone booster to allow people to call out when the visitor information center is closed.
But an agency spokeswoman said it will not replace the rope and life ring because staff is not trained to use it and could put them in jeopardy.
Marty Gaughan is still haunted by Allen’s drowning. On Tuesday he returned to Devils Churn and walked to the end of the chute. There he spotted something white on the rocks.
They were white Therafit brand shoes. During the rescue attempt, Allen had one shoe on and had lost the other.
Now they were on the rocks.
Gaughan gathered them and took them back to Portland. He sent a photo to Linda Allen, who confirmed that her husband was wearing Therafit shoes when he died.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” Gaughan said. “I think there’s something larger at work here.”
On Thursday afternoon, on his son Brian’s 33rd birthday, Steve Allen’s body washed ashore on the beach below Heceta Head lighthouse, 12 miles south of Cape Perpetua. Linda and Steve Allen had visited the lighthouse the day before he died.
-- Quinton Smith is the editor and manager of YachatsNews.com and can be reached at YachatsNews@gmail.com
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