{"id":69830,"date":"2017-08-01T18:44:54","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:44:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arizona-man-spends-night-clinging-to-life-vest-in-vallecito-reservoir\/"},"modified":"2017-08-02T00:44:54","modified_gmt":"2017-08-02T00:44:54","slug":"arizona-man-spends-night-clinging-to-life-vest-in-vallecito-reservoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/arizona-man-spends-night-clinging-to-life-vest-in-vallecito-reservoir\/","title":{"rendered":"Arizona man spends night clinging to life vest in Vallecito Reservoir"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"An
An Arizona man spent nearly nine hours in the waters of Vallecito Reservoir before being rescued Tuesday morning.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

An Arizona man in his early 20s was rescued Tuesday morning from Vallecito Reservoir after spending the night clinging to a life vest.<\/p>\n

Randy Vreeland, deputy chief with the Upper Pine River Fire Protection District, said a bystander walking his dog around 6 a.m. Tuesday on the northeast side of the reservoir heard someone in the water yelling for help and called 911.<\/p>\n

Vreeland said when emergency workers arrived, they spotted a man about 200 yards out on the lake, holding onto a life jacket. A boat from the Vallecito Marina retrieved the man and brought him to a medical unit on the lake\u2019s north end.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was in very bad shape,\u201d Vreeland said.<\/p>\n

La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office spokesman Dan Bender identified the man as Morgan Holliday, who apparently was vacationing at Vallecito.<\/p>\n

Bender and Vreeland said accounts of how Holliday ended up spending the night in the middle of the lake are a bit unclear, but alcohol played a role.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not getting real accurate information in a situation like that,\u201d Bender said.<\/p>\n

Holliday was severely hypothermic after being pulled from the reservoir.<\/p>\n

Bender said it appears Holliday and a friend went onto Vallecito Reservoir around dusk on Monday, each with separate canoes \u201cpossibly borrowed with or without permission.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both had personal floatation devices (life jackets) but were not wearing them, Vreeland said. Neither Holliday nor his friend was swimmers, Bender added.<\/p>\n

At some point, Holliday fell out of his canoe and capsized. Holliday then tried to get aboard his friend\u2019s canoe, which also capsized during the attempt.<\/p>\n

Vreeland said Holliday\u2019s friend was able to swim ashore, but he did not call 911. He was unsure why the friend did not alert authorities.<\/p>\n

Holliday was able to retrieve and hold onto his life jacket.<\/p>\n

In all, it\u2019s likely he spent about nine hours in the water, which had a recorded temperature of 71 degrees.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s lucky to be alive,\u201d Vreeland said.<\/p>\n

Holliday was taken to Mercy Regional Medical Center, where he was listed in fair condition as of 4 p.m. Tuesday, a Mercy spokesman said.<\/p>\n

Bender said only one unattended canoe was recovered from the lake Tuesday.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Authorities: \u2018He was in very bad shape\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69831,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,1370,1394],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-69830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-upper-pine-river-fire-protection-district","tag-vallecito-reservoir"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69830"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=69830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}