What a 2006 Sonar Search Revealed at Strawberry Reservoir
In November 2006, a boating accident on Strawberry Reservoir set off one of the most extensive underwater searches the reservoir had ever seen. Two people went missing when their boat was swamped in a storm, and the effort to find them would rely on technology far beyond what a typical recovery operation deploys.
Searchers used advanced sonar imaging to map the reservoir floor in a level of detail that had never been applied there before. Over roughly two weeks, the sonar returned more than the searchers went looking for. Alongside the two people from the 2006 incident, the search located victims from earlier tragedies at Strawberry: a group who had gone missing in a similar storm in 1995, and another who had been lost in 2001. In a single search, the sonar brought answers to families who had waited as long as eleven years.
Strawberry Reservoir has a long record of taking lives the same way. Sudden storms build fast over open water. The reservoir sits at high elevation, and even in summer the water stays cold enough to sap a swimmer’s strength quickly. Boats that are swamped or capsized can go down fast, and the depth and cold make recovery slow and dangerous.
What the search did not remove was the wreckage. Recovery operations focus on the people, as they should. But capsized boats, submerged gear, and the metal and fuel they carry do not disappear when the divers go home. Watercraft do not decompose. Fuel and oil settle into the water and sediment, and the physical debris from decades of incidents can remain on the floor of a reservoir that draws anglers, boaters, and families from across the state.
The 2006 search showed what sonar can find when someone maps the bottom carefully. It also showed how much is still down there, resting on the floor of one of Utah’s most popular reservoirs.
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Source: https://www.deseret.com/2006/11/18/19986530/a-remarkable-search-151-bodies-of-orem-couple-found-in-utah-reservoir/
