Idaho couple helps Flathead Search and Rescue in search for missing man

Sandy Ralston waited patiently on shore while they searched for the body.

Two boats from Flathead County Search and Rescue crept slowly up and down the Flathead River near Bigfork. Sandy’s husband, Gene Ralston, sat in one boat, studying a computer screen for sonar images transferred from the depths of the river. The Ralstons are two of the foremost experts on drowning recoveries. They were called in recently to help find the body of a 65-year-old Kalispell man last seen in November duck hunting. Witnesses said they last saw him in his kayak upstream from the Sportsman’s Bridge on Montana Highway 82.

The Ralstons arrived last Tuesday.

The Flathead River was at a low point of the season, so search and rescue leader Brian Heino said this was a good time to look for the man, and to train his crews in the process.

Heino said search dogs had indicated a scent of the man in the Swimming Creek area, so the focus of the search last week was there, about a half mile upstream from the Sportsman Bridge. There’s a large hole and eddy there, and logs are piled up on the riverbed like pickup sticks, Heino said.

Visibility was only about a foot.

“River searches with sonar are some of the most difficult, because of the amount of debris,” Heino said.

On Thursday, searchers worked this area, downstream to Flathead Lake. They used dogs, boats with sonar, had divers available, and they searched by air with a helicopter from Two Bear Air.

The Ralstons have been through this dozens of times. She and her husband have recovered 91 bodies with their side-scan sonar equipment.

Their work helps provide closure for families grieving over a loved one.

“We get tremendous satisfaction out of it,” Sandy said. “But if we can’t find somebody it’s almost as hard on us as it is on the family. When you can’t do it, it’s very, very disappointing.”

In 2002, just a year into their operation, the Ralstons were called to help search for a man missing in Flathead Lake. They concentrated their search in 300 feet of water, until the wife of the missing man called off the search. “She said ‘if he’s in that deep of water and he’ll never come up, I want him to stay there,’” Sandy said.

The Ralstons do this work out of a personal calling; it’s not a business, Sandy said. Gene and Sandy often become close to the families they work with. “We’ve met some really wonderful people and have become very close friends,”  Sandy said. “We’re like family.”

Sometimes the Ralstons recover what they were not looking for. During a search in Prince George, British Columbia, they found and recovered a body that had been missing for 29 years. It was not the man they were looking for. Last fall, the Ralstons recovered the body of a man in Placid Lake near Seeley Lake.

Once a body is located, divers are used to recover it. If the body is too deep and divers can’t be used, the Ralstons lower a remote-operated vehicle into the water, and attaches a clamp to the body.

“We try to get a wrist or an ankle,” she said, “but sometimes we can grab their belt. That’s not always a good thing, though, because the belts can come off.”

The Ralstons work often in Canada, where search and rescue resources are limited. Sandy Ralston said once a person is presumed drowned, the Canadian authorities have limited resources to search for it and recover it.

Flathead Search and Rescue is purchasing its own side-scan sonar equipment and the organization wanted to work with the Ralstons to get a feel for the equipment.

The side-scan sonar trails underneath the boat by a cable. The sonar shoots soundwaves to the side and banks of the river, and is able to see more accurately what lies beneath. The sonar transmits realtime topographic information back to the boat.

They work well in lakes, but “rivers are very difficult,” Sandy Ralston said.  One body they were searching for in the South Saskatchewan River was found 70 miles from where they had searched.

The Ralstons don’t do much work in the ocean. Bodies don’t last long there. “Other than crayfish, not much in freshwater will touch a human,” Sandy said. “In the oceans they’re pretty much gone in a couple of months.”

The couple, based in Kuna, Idaho, has worked five times on Flathead Lake.

After lunch at the fishing access last Thursday, the crews resumed their work in the river.

At one point Heino answered his cell phone. It was a one of the other searchers. “Did they find him?” Heino asked.

By the look on his face, you could tell they did not.

With the river rising soon, it may be months before the search can resume.

 “The chances of finding him with the sonar are pretty minimal,” Sandy Ralston said. “But at least they wanted to try.”

Search crews will continue their work — whether by air or in the water. “We’ll use every piece of equipment we have, to help provide closure,” Heino said. “We’ll continue to look until we find him. We’re just trying to do the best job we can for the family.”