The Drone That Saved Seven People Is Still in Utah Lake
On Saturday, August 3, 2024, a family of seven took a boat out of Lindon Marina onto Utah Lake. Somewhere between the marina and Saratoga Springs, the hull sprung a leak near the inboard/outboard engine. They tried to bail with a bucket. The water came in faster than they could throw it out.
Around 11 a.m., someone on board called a family member on shore, who called 911. The Utah County Sheriff’s Office search and rescue team responded, along with Lindon Police, State Parks staff, and a Utah Department of Public Safety helicopter. Then a bystander at the scene asked the police if he could put up his drone.
The Drone Found Them
He spotted all seven of them in the water about a mile and a half from shore, roughly 1.15 miles off American Fork Boat Harbor, and passed GPS coordinates to the search team. Two civilian boats reached them. Every one of them was wearing a life jacket: three adults, two teenagers, two toddlers. One boat took two people aboard and towed the sinking vessel back to Lindon Marina. The other took the rest.
Sgt. Spencer Cannon of the Utah County Sheriff’s Office said the drone likely saved about an hour of searching. The water was warm that day, but he noted that an extra hour in it could have made hypothermia a concern with toddlers involved.
The drone did not come back. Its operator overrode the automatic function that would have returned it to him once the battery ran low. He kept it up until the family was found. Then it fell into Utah Lake.
What Stayed In
That is the part of this story worth sitting with. The people came out. The boat came out. The drone is still down there.
Nobody is going after it, and it is hard to argue anyone should. No agency in Utah is tasked with retrieving a consumer drone from a lakebed. It is one small object in a large lake, and by every measure that mattered that day, this was a clean success.
But small objects accumulate. A drone is a lithium-polymer battery pack, a circuit board, and a plastic airframe. Now add the phones, keys, coolers, anchors, batteries, and tackle that have gone over the side of Utah boats across decades, plus the vessels and vehicles that never came back up at all. That is the real condition of the bottom. Not one disaster. Thousands of small ones, with nobody assigned to any of them.
Where We Fit
Utah’s search and rescue system is good at what it is built for. What happened that Saturday, with the sheriff’s office, state parks, a helicopter crew, two civilian boats, and one bystander willing to lose his own equipment over it, is that system working exactly as intended.
What it is not funded or mandated to do is go back for what sank. Once the people are safe, the emergency is closed. The object stays.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah nonprofit building the capability to close that gap. Our work is locating, documenting, and removing submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from lakes and reservoirs across the state. We are early in that build. We run volunteer dive cleanups today, and we are assembling the equipment, permits, insurance, and certified team that heavier underwater recovery demands. The principle is simple. What goes into Utah’s water should not stay there by default just because nobody was assigned to bring it back.
The family from Lindon Marina got home safe, and the man with the drone is a large part of why it went as fast as it did. He paid for that with a piece of equipment that is now part of the lakebed. Getting things like it back out is the whole job.
If you know of a submerged vessel, vehicle, or object in a Utah waterway, report it at fathomrestoration.org. If you want to help, donate or volunteer.
Fathom Restoration is a disabled-veteran-led Utah 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to lake cleanup and the recovery of submerged vehicles, vessels, and debris from Utah’s lakes and waterways. Donate / Volunteer / Report a vehicle at fathomrestoration.org.
Source: https://www.fox13now.com/news/local-news/family-of-7-rescued-from-sinking-boat-on-utah-lake
