Bad place to dock. The 14-foot outboard ran up over one of the the dam’s orange-painted steel roller gates. Image: Buffalo County sheriff
Boater unresponsive as danger loomed
ALMA, Wis. – A small fishing craft drifted powerless into a gate at the Alma dam on the Mississippi River and wedged itself precariously into a roller gate. Crews rescued the lone person aboard and lifted him to safety uninjured. Apparently, said Sheriff Michael Osmond, the man was unconscious and unaware of the impending crash. The sheriff declined to release the boater’s name but said he was 64 years old and from Wabasha eight miles upriver. The man was charged with drunken boating. The boat was undamaged and towed to shore. An Army Corps dam operator had alerted the Alma Fire Department to impending crash about 2 p.m. The Corps operator had spotted the boat drifting in current toward the dam with an apparently unresponsive person aboard.