Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 23, 1993 TAG: 9305200108
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON and LON WAGNER STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"The man was totally mutilated," said Revercomb, still bothered by the sight of the victim's body he pulled from the lake just off the shoreline from his weekend home on Bettys Creek.
Revercomb compared the man's injuries to those of a person who had fallen on a grenade.
"It was just a horror scene," he said.
Authorities say it could have been prevented if Alan Kerns and Samuel Garwood had been operating their boat properly - and safely.
The scene also may have been prevented had there been tougher safety laws on the books to guard against reckless boating.
Kerns, 29, of Roanoke, was killed May 8 when he was thrown from his bass boat while trying to make a high-speed turn. He was run over as the boat circled wildly.
Garwood was also flipped into the water, but he escaped serious injury.
Neither was wearing a life jacket. They were not using an automatic engine shut-off that would have stopped the speeding boat even before they hit the water.
There are no speed limits for boats on Smith Mountain Lake. The only places that have speed restrictions are those posted with "No Wake" signs, which, one game warden said, "practically take an act of Congress to get."
Bass boats like the one Garwood and Kerns were in are capable of speeds of more than 80 mph. Eyewitnesses said the the two men may have been going 50, 60 or even 70 mph.
"When you're talking about running 50 miles an hour on the water, that's the equivalent of running 70 in a car," said Gary Arrington, the game warden who arrived at the fatal boat accident while the bass boat was still circling.
In other ways, boating accidents are more dangerous than car accidents. "If you're ever in a motor vehicle and you get thrown out and you don't get run over," Arrington said, "at least you don't have to worry about drowning."
Virginia does not require boaters to take boating safety classes before they can operate a boat.
Nor does the state license boaters or require them to wear life jackets or mandate the use of engine shut-off switches. Only in certain designated areas are there any speed limits.
Jim Revercomb wonders why.
Perhaps, he said, if just one of these potentially lifesaving safety precautions was law, then maybe Kerns would be alive today.
Or maybe not.
Revercomb and other boaters at Smith Mountain Lake acknowledge that boating safety also comes down to individual responsibility - no matter what laws are on the books.
Drunken boating is illegal, for example, yet it remains the worst water-safety problem in the state. In fact, five minutes after midnight on the day Virginia's drunken boating law went into effect - July 1, 1989 - game wardens on Smith Mountain Lake charged a man with boating while intoxicated.
"It's been the same since the beginning of time," said James Cox, boating education coordinator with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. "You can figure 25 percent of all boating accidents are alcohol-related; you can figure 50 percent of the fatalities are alcohol-related."
After Kerns' death, several people called for game wardens to crack down on speeding, recklessness and drinking on the lake.
Lt. Karl Martin, a game warden who has worked the lake since the early 1970s, said he's trying. But the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries is understaffed, underequipped and underfunded.
As an example, Martin points out that in 1960, before Smith Mountain Lake even existed, there were six game wardens for the area - two each in Pittsylvania, Franklin and Bedford counties. Thirty-three years later, there are seven wardens covering the same area - and 500-plus miles of shoreline.
"We've seen a great increase of one," Martin said, sarcastically.
The enforcement branch of Game and Inland Fisheries has shrunk statewide over the past four years from 208 to 150 wardens, according to Larry Hart, the department's deputy director.
The department's budget has remained the same - $25 million - since 1989, Hart said, because the number of hunting license purchasers has leveled off. The department does not receive funding from general tax dollars - its money comes from hunting and fishing license sales, boat titling fees and the nongame wildlife checkoff on tax forms.
"One year, three years ago, we ran out of money and had to stop paying bills for two or three weeks," Hart said.
To some boaters, however, a few wardens is more than enough. They don't think stepped-up enforcement would do much to help.
"I question that," said Ed Waters, who owns Bridgewater Marina at Hales Ford Bridge.
Waters cited a day he was boating on the lake with his family, and game wardens stopped him three times on routine checks.
He contends that the lake is safe and he gets upset with negative publicity surrounding a relatively few accidents and unsafe boaters.
"It's one-tenth of one percent," he said.
But the wardens say they generally try not to bother people who aren't causing problems.
"The operator has to remain sober, but as far as passengers, we basically have no problem with it," Franklin County game warden T.E. Hayes said.
"We know that's one of the main reasons people go out on the lake - to go out there and have a couple of beers," Hayes said. "We're not that dense. You've just got to use some tact if you're going to drink."
Now the good news. Martin said that, even though the game wardens are short-staffed - they won't have routine daily patrols during the week this summer - Smith Mountain Lake has had fewer boating accidents each of the past three years.
Martin credits the department's own efforts to make its patrolling of the lake as visible as possible. He also credits the media for bringing attention to the issue of drunken boating.
"At midnight, when you're stopping boats with six people in them and five of them are drunk and the other person's driving, you think you're getting your message across," Martin said.
That message is becoming increasingly important. Virginia now has 200,000 registered boats, and wardens and people who live at Smith Mountain Lake say they've noticed more boats on the water each year.
As the lake's main channels become more crowded, and the water in those channels becomes choppy from boats' wakes, boaters are heading for smaller coves.
Arrington said he has seen five or six boats pulling skiers in the same cove and the same time. "And that makes me cringe," he said.
Lin Chaff, another witness to Kerns' death, said Bettys Cove has had its share of action over the past year. She said she has seen five or six near-collisions of jet skis in the cove.
The early May accident has made Chaff rethink her weekends on the lake.
"At a quiet cove, where there are blue herons and all that beauty, to see that violent type of death occur right before your eyes . . .," Chaff said. "I don't know if I can in good conscience let my kids go out there again."
Arrington said many boaters don't recognize that the combination of hot sun, pounding waves and the water's glare can impair a boater's perception. Alcohol on top of that makes it dangerous, he said.
"Boating can be one of the most pleasurable things you could ever experience," he said, "but if it's done carelessly, it can be a nightmare."
For a list of boating safety classes or other information on boating safety, call the Vinton Game and Inland Fisheries office at 857-7704.
by CNB