Woman Airlifted To Hospital After Rescuers Pull 3 Tubers From Cedar Creek

BERKELEY TOWNSHIP, NJ — Three people were rescued from Cedar Creek on Sunday night and one had reportedly hit her head during a "seizure-like" episode, officials said.

The scene was near the Western Boulevard overpass between Berkeley and Lacey. Berkeley Township Police arrived to the canoe access at 8:30 p.m. to investigate reports that three people had gone out tubing "and were in distress with the daylight hours running out."

One of the people had gotten separated "and was last seen drifting eastbound in the creek face down and possibly unresponsive," police said.

Lanoka Harbor EMS arrived around 9:52 p.m. to help Berkeley Township police and EMS, 1st Lt. Carl Weingroff said in a news release. Specialized teams from around the two townships began figuring out how to rescue the people from the creek. The Ocean County Sheriff's Department and New Jersey State Police aviation team were also there, Berkeley police said.

Kayaks with fire and EMS personnel went out onto the creek to begin the search, launching from Western Boulevard into the creek.

Crews found two women about half an hour later, "approximately 1/2 mile against the creek current," according to Weingroff.

One of the women had "seizure-like activity" and might have hit her head on stumps in the creek, the family member with her said. The 26-year-old woman was not fully responsive, Weingroff said, and had been missing several hours.

Fire rescue teams attached the women's kayaks to Weingroff's and headed back up the creek. Weingroff gave the woman oxygen and made sure she could breathe, while adjusting her life preserver "to conserve any body heat due to a possibly chance of any further hypothermia," he said in the news release.

Paramedics from RWJ and Berkeley Township Police EMS met the rescue kayak teams on shore. First responders eventually took the sick woman to a hospital by helicopter. She was in stable condition though she was "displaying hypothermic conditions," police said.

The helicopter landed at Central Regional High School in Bayville, to transport the woman to Hackensack Meridian Jersey Shore Trauma Center.

While the woman was being transferred, fire rescue kayakers found a third person and brought them back to land. They refused any further medical attention, according to Weingroff.

Other local agencies there were the Lacey Township Police Department, Bayville Fire Department, Manitou Park Fire Department, Pinewald Pioneer Fire Department, Lanoka Harbor Fire Department, and the Lacey Township Dive Team.

None of the first responders reported injuries, Weingroff said.