Aug 28, 2003 By Jennifer Harr 3 min read

Several safety changes have been made since three drownings in 2000 on the Youghiogheny River near the area of Dimple Rock at Ohiopyle, Park Superintendent Doug Hoehn said Wednesday. Among those charges are increased signage that indicate white water rafting should not be taken lightly and a new video that perspective rafters can watch. The video, remade for the 2001 season, offers would-be rafters a glimpse at real people capsizing on the rapids, and in fear, said Hoehn.

“We actually had a separate structure built to focus on safety,” said Hoehn, noting that the park installed a kiosk at which people can watch the video and find out information about the river.

With a lot of attention on Dimple Rock, a large, roughly triangular shaped rock on Swimmer’s Rapids, Hoehn said a focus group was convened in the wakes of the deaths both to study general safety and address concerns about the rock. Dimple is part of Class IV, or more dangerous, rapids on the Youghiogheny River.

Dimple Rock has been blamed for the 2000 death of Andrea Yealy, a 16-year-old Adams County girl, who died when she got pinned underneath the rock and drowned. When experts looked at the underside of the rock in the wake of two other deaths in the area, Hoehn said they found an undercut in the rock roughly the size of a mini-van.

While the group has explored options to fill in the undercut, Hoehn said there are pros and cons to altering the natural way of Dimple.

“Determining the feasibility is one thing and getting permission to do it is another thing,” said Hoehn. “Although I may have personal feelings come into play, I work for the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, and I have been unable to secure permission to make any engineering changes to the rock.”

Additionally, Hoehn said a portage, or walking route, has been put in by Dimple Rock so that rafters can avoid that stretch of the river all together. Putting in that portage took time, said Hoehn, because the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and not the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, owned that tract of land.

“We certainly don’t want people to think portage is finking out. It’s not.’

Also, in 2001, Hoehn said he was able to hire a temporary park ranger and a river guide to help keep rafters safer.

“Unfortunately, I have not been able to do that for the past two years for budgetary reasons, and I deeply regret that,” he said.

Many of the changes Hoehn mentioned during the inquest into the rafting death of Andrew Dearden were part of recommendations made after an inquest into the three deaths in 2000.

Killed that year Yealy, of Adams County; Willie Pate, 46, of Cleveland, Ohio; and Stewart W. Hill, 63, of Andover, Ohio.