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November 14, 2009

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Woman rescued at Lake Mead

Kim Smith

Wednesday, Oct. 13, 1999 | 10:33 a.m.

A 19-year-old woman was rescued uninjured Tuesday morning after spending 12 hours adrift on Lake Mead.

National Park Service Spokesman Bert Byers said the woman, whose name was not released, ended up spending Monday night on the lake after her personal water craft ran out of gas around 6:45 p.m. Her husband and some friends, who were in a sailboat, left the woman to get gas, but when they returned they could not locate her.

Members of the National Park Service and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation searched for the woman all night, but it wasn't until a Hoover Dam security guard spotted her from a lookout post at the dam the next morning that she was found, Byers said.

The woman was picked up about 6:45 a.m. Tuesday and taken to the Lake Mead Marina where she was greeted by her husband and about 30 other family members and friends, Byers said.

"Her condition was very good," Byers said. "She was cold and wet because all she had on was her bathing suit and a personal flotation device, but she was OK. Her family took her and left and we're not even sure they took her to a hospital to be checked out."

Byers said just a few weeks ago a man spent the night drifting in Lake Mead with a just a personal flotation device.

Lake Mead is 110 miles long with 550 to 600 miles of shoreline, so both visitors were lucky, Byers said.

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