CRAIG T. KOJIMA / CKOJIMA@STARBULLETIN.COM
Lee Marques of Fire Rescue searched for Daniel Dick today.
Divers retrieve Fire rescue divers this morning retrieved the body of an 18-year-old tourist who was sucked headfirst into the Blowhole yesterday afternoon.
Blowhole victim
The Los Angeles teen was
sucked into the Blowhole
yesterday by a burst of waterBy Leila Fujimori
lfujimori@starbulletin.comHe was identified as Daniel Dick of Los Angeles, Fire Capt. Richard Soo said this morning.
Soo said Dick was straddling the Blowhole yesterday at about 3:15 p.m. when water gushed through the rock formation and blasted him into the air. Dick then fell into the hole and disappeared with the receding water.
Fire rescue teams resumed search after daybreak this morning and two divers found Dick's body in the hole about 10:15 a.m. Soo said firefighters searched in the water and air, and long the shoreline yesterday but feared Dick was trapped in the hole.
Dick's mother and younger brothers were at the scene when his body was found. After he disappeared at the popular tourist attraction near Sandy Beach, all his mother and younger brothers could do was watch -- and hope.
Hope that fire rescue crews would find their son and brother. But there was no sign of him, no cry for help, no body.
FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
Honolulu Fire Department's Todd Hugo, top, turned away as water exploded out of the Blowhole yesterday. Firefighters were searching for Daniel Dick who was sucked into the hole. Hugo was tethered to safety man Jeff LeCates, center.
As he straddled the blowhole, he was warned by a man nearby, "Don't do that," said Moses Soto, who saw the whole thing.
"He went and did it anyway," Soto said.
"When the water came up, it threw him in the air about this high, and the water just sucked him in," he said, motioning about 5.5 feet high.
"I was just stunned."
Soto, 32, stationed at Schofield Barracks, stopped at the scenic spot with his wife and two sons, 5 and 8, who also witnessed the incident.
Lifeguards from Sandy Beach helped search for the victim. They provided a personal watercraft with a rescue sled attached, which brought divers out.
Ocean Safety divers used snorkel gear to search from the ocean's surface, while divers from the Honolulu Fire Department with scuba gear searched underwater, looking into the caves along the coast from the Blowhole to the Lanai Lookout.
Search conditions were terrible, with 4- to 8-foot swells under overcast skies and intermittent rain.
"It's choppy, churning water with very little visibility," said acting Capt. John Hoogsteden for Windward operations of the city's Ocean Safety and Lifeguard Services.
Some HFD personnel tried to look into the Blowhole, tethered to a rope, as others served as anchors.
A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter searched from 3:45 p.m. until just after 4:30 p.m.
FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM
These three girls from Washington state were friends of the male victim, whom they had met during his vacation here. Honolulu Fire Capt. Richard Soo, far right, comforted one girl, who had been with the victim at the edge of the Blowhole at the time of the accident. The girls were escorted to a firetruck yesterday to wait during the search.
The HFD helicopter, Air 1, arrived at 5:30 p.m. after responding to a hiker-in-distress call on the Kaau Crater trail in Palolo Valley.
"He's somehow wedged in there," said HFD Battalion Chief James Arrero.
Arrero had hoped to stand watch at low tide, "when everything gets washed out," but the next low tide was at 3:54 a.m. during darkness.
Firefighter Danny Kapuniai Jr. recalled a few other incidents over the years in which someone had been washed into the hole. His father was on a rescue squad that retrieved at least two bodies during the 1960s, he said. "Usually they float out a couple days after."
Earlier yesterday afternoon, the teenager, who had just graduated from high school, had been at Sandy Beach with three vacationing young women from Washington state whom he met in Honolulu, then decided to walk to the Blowhole with one of them, fire Capt. Richard Soo said.
The Fire Department suspended its search just after 8 p.m. last night. The victim's mother wanted to stay at the Blowhole lookout, just in case her son climbed up the rocks.
But fire personnel told her it was highly unlikely that her son was still alive.
Star-Bulletin reporter Nelson Daranciang contributed to this report
