Inexperienced, inebriated boaters overwhelm law enforcement

Tim Molloy

Wednesday, March 25, 1998 | 11:28 a.m.

PHOENIX - To get behind the wheel of a car in most states, you need to log practice hours, pass a written exam and prove yourself on a test drive.

But to take the helm of a boat, a passion for many in the desert Southwest, there's only one requirement: You need to be at least 12 years old.

Law enforcement officers say they simply can't stop all the inexperienced and drunken boating that claims lives every year, not with millions of people rushing to lakes and rivers in search of fun. The latest wreck was Monday's crash on Lake Mead that killed four people and seriously injured three.

Investigators were still investigating the cause of the crash Wednesday. But they said it came seven hours after park service rangers stopped the boat and arrested its driver for boating while intoxicated and hit-and-run. The rangers were responding to a report that he had hit another boat, causing minor damage.

The rangers allowed the boat to stay out on the water because an 18-year-old who they determined had not been drinking said he could take over, said supervisory park ranger Paul Crawford. When the boat crashed that night, the 18-year-old, who has not been identified, was gone.

The man driving the boat, Michael Yost, its owner, was one of the people who had been too intoxicated earlier in the day to take the wheel, Crawford said.

Leaving boats in the hands of a lone sober driver isn't unusual for park rangers and other law enforcement agents who patrol the waterways of the Southwest. It would be impossible to pull every boat with a drunken driver, officers say, so they simply arrest the drivers and find others on the boat to replace them.

Ten million people a year use Lake Mead, which straddles the Arizona-Nevada line just east of Las Vegas. Formed on the Colorado River by the mammoth Hoover Dam, it is a magnet for recreational boaters. It is 110 miles long and covers 550 square miles - twice the size of Rhode Island.

Karen Whitney, a National Park Service spokeswoman, said she doesn't know how many drunken boaters may be on the lake at peak times, but said law enforcement offices can't deal with all of them.

"There are about 50 park rangers for the area and there can be 5,000 boats on a given day," said. "Obviously, we're not going to catch them all."

In 1997, there was one fatality from a watercraft accident in the Lake Mead Recreation Area. In 1996, there were three. Whitney doesn't know how many of the fatalities involved alcohol use.

But Arizona Game and Fish reported eight boat fatalities statewide in 1997, at least five of which involved alcohol use, according to incident reports the agency provided to The Associated Press. The agency listed boater inexperience as a factor in another of the deaths.

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whose agency handles lake patrols in the county, said the policy of allowing the one sober person on a boat to take over could create problems.

"Will the sober one become unsober with all these drunks on the boat?" he asked. "Maybe we should assure that that sober guy goes back to the shore."

Arpaio declined to comment specifically on the decision to allow the boat stay on Lake Mead Sunday.

A leader of Mothers Against Drunk Driving said the policy isn't good enough.

"I don't think an 18-year-old should be given the responsibility for a boat full of drunk people," said Carole Bartholomeaux-Adain, a spokeswoman for the Phoenix chapter of MADD. She said the group will push for tighter boating laws in the next legislative session.

Law enforcement officers say alcohol isn't their only problem. Whitney said rangers have caught 7 year olds driving boats, despite the mandatory age of 12 in most of the Southwest. In California, the cut-off age for boating is 16.

Arizona Game and Fish law enforcement programs coordinator Kim Keith said boaters don't need any special training or experience before they can take the wheel, and boating under the influence charges don't affect a person's driving record, he said. There's also no way to force boaters off the water for repeated violations, he said.

Game and Fish has supported several bills to tighten the rules of the water in recent years, but rarely has any success with the Legislature. Lawmakers are hesitant to be seen as cracking down on recreation, Keith said.

As a result, Game and Fish emphasizes educating boaters, he said. Keith noted that about 600 people attended classes last year. But there are nearly 160,000 registered boats in Arizona.

The agency would do more to publicize voter safety if it had more money, he said. But he added that even if it could draw more people to classes, it wouldn't have money to conduct them.