Search Continues for Missing Woman at South Holston Lake

SULLIVAN COUNTY, Tenn. – The search continues for a Johnson City woman missing since Tuesday from Lake View Dock Marina on South Holston Lake.

Two commercial deep-water divers have without success combed the lakebed around the missing woman’s boat slip three times since just before midnight Friday. 

Alice Bachman, 55, was last seen covering her family’s boat around 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.

By Sunday afternoon, the deep-water duo had searched a circle about 50 feet in diameter, said Mitch Skaggs, a local deep-water dive expert who assembled the team and oversaw the operation.

“What’s difficult is that the most promising area has been investigated thoroughly,” Skaggs said. “It’s very disappointing, we’re all incredibly frustrated. We wanted to bring some closure to the family. They’ve been at every dive. They come, in a very emotional manner, and say ‘Thank you so much, we understand that you’re risking your life.’ ”

Previously, emergency crews dragged the lake and searched it with submersible cameras and robotic divers, but were hindered by the lake’s 200-foot depth. Local rescue divers are certified to only 130 feet.

Deep-water recovery is far more difficult, Skaggs said. Each dive must be carefully orchestrated and perfectly executed to avoid life-threatening complications.

“It’s a very risky operation even if you know what you’re doing,” said Jerry Fleenor, the Sullivan County Emergency Management Agency director. “Like driving a car, you know how to do it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have an accident.”

The divers go into the water with 250 to 300 pounds of equipment. It takes eight hours to prepare for one 20-minute dive, and at least a 12-hour recovery period, Skaggs said. Two hundred feet underwater, the lake is 38 degrees, and so dark divers can see only about an arm’s length in front of them.

Because their task is extremely strenuous on the body, a time frame for the next deep-water dive is uncertain.

In the meantime, Fleenor said, standard recovery operations including dragging and camera searches will continue.

Today, the recovery team plans to use a sonar device that sends radio waves similar to those used to make ultrasound scans. The waves bounce off the bottom of the lake, creating a picture on a monitor or printer. If an object is on the floor, it will appear as a shadow in the image, said Jim Bean, the water rescue team leader of the Kingsport Life Saving Crew.

Fleenor said the sonar device has been successful in the past under similar circumstances.

The Herald Courier reported both Friday and Saturday that the Tennessee Valley Authority said recovery operations were postponed until the deep-water team could be found and brought in. That information was incorrect. On Sunday morning, Fleenor said rescue operations have been under way consistently since the incident was reported; the rescue teams often working 12-hour days on very little sleep. Some 50 volunteers have been working tirelessly at the scene. 

“I don’t know where TVA got that information,” Fleenor said. “We’ve been here every day since Tuesday night.”

TVA spokeswoman Barbara Martocci said Sunday the inaccurate information likely was due to a miscommunication between decision-making authorities and TVA’s media relations office.

There are no plans to suspend or delay the operation. 

“I don’t think giving up is in their vocabulary,” Skaggs said. “One hundred percent of their effort is placed on that body in that water.”

NEWS CHANNEL 11 Connects reporter George Jackson contributed to this report.

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