Rescuers Hold Out Hope For Missing Boater

Wednesday, May 9th 2007, 7:34 am

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Rescuers continued to search Wednesday for a Meeker man who disappeared in the rain-swollen North Canadian River when the flat-bottom Jon boat he was riding in overturned.

Searchers in boats and a helicopter scoured about 35 miles of the river and its banks from Bearden to state Highway 99 north of Seminole without any sign of 24-year-old Wesley Davis, who went missing shortly before 5 p.m. Tuesday, said Pottawatomie County Chief Deputy Jim Patten.

``We'll have 40 miles of river searched by nightfall,'' Patten said. ``We're trying to stay optimistic at this point. Until we finish tonight, we're going to consider it a rescue effort.''

Davis was riding in the boat with two other men, who were pulled from the river Tuesday night by Pottawatomie County deputies. Patten said it wasn't clear what the men were doing in the river.

``I don't know if they were fishing or just messing around,'' Patten said. ``We're still investigating that.''

One man was taken to an Oklahoma City hospital, where he was treated for exhaustion, and the other refused treatment at the scene, Patten said.

The river was in a large swath of Oklahoma under a flood watch issued by the National Weather Service. Only the Panhandle and far northwestern parts of the state were excluded from the flood watch area.

``Right now a lot of the rivers are leveling off or going below flood stage. The wild card is the overnight rain that's possible,'' said forecaster Daryl Williams with the National Weather Service office in Norman.

In the area where Davis went missing, the river was not above flood stage but was higher than its usual level, Williams said.

``It doesn't have to flood to be dangerous,'' Williams said.

In a sixth consecutive day of rainy weather in the state, some menacing storms passed over Kiowa County in the afternoon hours, but the sheriff's office said it had no reports of damage. Television footage showed low-hanging clouds that Williams called ``short-lived instability.''

``It would look like it was going to turn into a tornado, but just never got everything lined up to go that way,'' Williams said.

A handful of businesses near Medicine Creek in Comanche County were evacuated around 11:30 a.m. as a precaution as water was released to lower the levels of Lake Ellsworth and Lake Lawtonka, county public information officer Chris Killmer said. The businesses in the city of Medicine Park were closed for the remainder of the day and it was unclear whether they'd reopen on Thursday, Killmer said.

No residential areas were affected by the evacuation.

``Across the board, the waters have really receded, but we're still having to release some of that water from those lakes,'' Killmer said.

Nearly 40 people were rescued from their flooded homes or stranded vehicles after the storms late Tuesday and early Wednesday, Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management spokeswoman Michelann Ooten said.

Comanche County was one of three sites in the state where tornadoes were reported late Tuesday. Killmer said the twisters touched down in pasture areas and no structures were damaged. However, the county had received about 20 reports of water damage on its 211 disaster hotline, he said.

A truck driver suffered a minor shoulder injury when his tractor-trailer was blown over on Interstate 40 near El Reno around midnight. A total of four tractor-trailers overturned, and emergency management officials reported heavy damage to an industrial park and three prominent El Reno businesses _ Dexter Axle, Gemini Coatings and Heritage Press. A Veterans of Foreign Wars building also had its roof torn off in the storm. No damage estimates were immediately available.

Local emergency managers also reported possible tornadoes near Gracemont in Caddo County, where trees were knocked down, and near Minco in Grady County one home, some barns, a carport and a silo full of grain, Ooten said.

Williams said weather service crews examined storm-struck areas on Wednesday but a report on whether tornadoes had indeed touched down wouldn't be available until Thursday.

Nearly 1,100 Oklahoma Gas and Electric Co. customers in the El Reno area just west of Oklahoma City had been without electricity just after the storm, but that number was cut to about 200 by Wednesday night.

Gov. Brad Henry has already declared a state of emergency for all 77 of Oklahoma's counties to allow local governments to seek reimbursement for recovery costs through the state's disaster public assistance program where conditions warrant.

One death has been attributed to the storms that have drenched Oklahoma since Friday. A Canute man died after his car was swept off a Washita County road during a thunderstorm Sunday, the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said.