An Anchorage man remains lost in the Susitna River. His family is searching for answers

Yahoo

14-06-2025

Jun. 13—PALMER — Three months after two workers went missing in the Susitna River, their families say they still have more questions than answers despite a report that includes accounts from three other workers who survived.
Sean Kendall and Skye Rench were riding in a side-by-side the morning of March 6 when the ATV punched through the river ice and sank. Three others managed to escape but Rench and Kendall were swept under.
Rench's body was spotted by a private pilot on May 22 and recovered. His father, Thomas Rench, said he spent 77 days and thousands of dollars searching when others stopped, only to have "a stranger" find his son.
Kendall has not been found.
The Alaska Dive Search Rescue and Recovery Team returned to the river in early June but found no indication of the missing man or the side-by-side.
Kendall's brother-in-law, Pete Caruso, flew the area on June 6 but saw no sign of the missing man.
"This'll be the third time I've flown in search since they found Skye. I 100% want to find him," Caruso said the day before the flight. "The hard part, to be honest ... is at the end of the flight when you don't find nothing."
'No business being out there'
The men had just gotten off a 12-hour shift with Alaska Directional LLC installing a Matanuska Telecom Association underground fiber-optic cable from Point MacKenzie to Tyonek. The remote job was complicated by a low-snow winter with spells of unseasonable warmth that led to unpredictable ice conditions.
Skye Rench, a 32-year-old from Wasilla engaged to be married this summer, had just completed his rookie Iron Dog snowmachine race in February. Kendall, a 42-year-old from Anchorage with a teenage son, was an avid snowmachiner.
It remains unclear why a group of men so experienced in the Alaska outdoors would choose the route they did given the questionable ice, while working a job covered by state permits and workplace regulations.
"Them guys had no business being out there in a side-by-side," Thomas Rench said.
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the incident. So is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the men's union. Neither investigation has been publicly released.
Kendall's brother and brother-in-law say the state missed opportunities to enforce work permits that appear to have banned the use of ATVs to access the job site.
Alaska Department of Fish and Game permits banned overland travel without adequate snow and ice cover.
"No one's asking how this happened," said Kendall's brother, Dave Kendall. "There's two people that are dead. OSHA's only going to look at it as a workplace accident. At the end of the day, something led up to this. Something happened ... a decision was made."
Palmer-based Alaska Directional is owned by Bristol Bay Industrial LLC, which is affiliated with Bristol Bay Native Corp.
Alaska Directional responded to a number of questions for this story with a statement: "We are deeply saddened by the tragic incident that occurred on Thursday, March 6. Our thoughts and heartfelt condolences are with the families, loved ones, and colleagues of those affected. The safety of our colleagues, contractors, and everyone else we meet in our work is our number one priority. We continue to cooperate with investigating authorities."
Survivor accounts
While no investigative findings have been released regarding the March 6 incident, an Alaska State Troopers report includes accounts with the three survivors that provide new information about the moments around the sinking.
That morning, the report said, the five workers climbed into an enclosed cab Polaris Ranger for the hourlong trip to a Point MacKenzie parking lot and the drive home.
Troopers say they were alerted to a problem by a 911 call just before 9 a.m.
Interviewed at Alaska Directional's Palmer offices about six hours later, one of the survivors said the crew had been using an ice road to cross the Susitna but opted to travel upriver to an Enstar pipeline trail because the ice road "was becoming rough and rutted up," the incident report said.
The side-by-side was going about 30 mph when the rear tires broke through the ice, another survivor said. He said "the crew believed the open water to be water on the ice from the tide," the report said, though he also described seeing open water farther downriver.
Rench and Kendall were sitting in the back, according to the survivor accounts.
The driver was initially trapped but managed to get the window open and escaped into the water, the report said. The front passenger was able to jump out, push off the sinking side-by-side "and make his way onto the ice," it said. Another man in back crawled into the front and ended up in the water.
The Ranger sank with Rench and Kendall inside, but the survivors described seeing them surface, according to the report.
One survivor said he tried to rescue the men and grabbed Kendall but couldn't get him onto the ice before he went under, the report said. Rench was already underwater at that point, he told troopers.
The men said they lost sight of Kendall and Rench and started making the roughly 2-mile walk back downriver to a work camp, according to the report. They were picked up by a helicopter that morning.
More losses to bad ice
A few weeks after the ATV went into the river, Alaska Directional lost a piece of equipment in the ice as work continued amid spring breakup conditions.
State officials have said Alaska Directional's operations put MTA out of compliance with permits required to work within the Susitna Flats State Game Refuge. In late March, Alaska Directional received emergency approval to remove the sunken loader and barge out other heavy equipment that couldn't be removed overland due to deteriorating conditions.
Fish and Game did not initiate any enforcement actions at the time but instead chose to work toward permit compliance, officials have said.
Kendall's brother and brother-in-law question why the agency didn't do more to push for compliance over the winter — or even shut it down.
Fish and Game did not enforce permit violations before March 6 despite the lack of ice or snow cover, Caruso said. And then when the loader went into the ice, officials "moved the goalpost" to avoid assessing any penalties, he said.
Sarah Myers, area habitat biologist with Fish and Game, declined to respond to comments from the families about anything not specific to permits.
Under an agreement arrived at with MTA and Alaska Directional, the equipment left along the Susitna was supposed to be removed by June 14, Myers said.
MTA has requested an extension for removal until June 30 "for the barge to be able to work with the tide schedule," she said in a June 4 email.