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Teens raft over deadly Elgin dam

Elgin fire officials are angered but relieved after two teenagers in an inflatable raft plunged over a downtown dam where two firefighters were killed 40 years ago.

The 16-year-old boys went over the Kimball Street dam on the Fox River twice Saturday night, before witnesses called 911 at about 7:30 p.m., officials said.

“We are lucky the water levels were low enough,” said Elgin Fire Department Batallion Chief Terry Bruce. “Any higher, they could have been injured or killed.”

About half of the fire department’s crew responded to the initial report that a boat had washed over the damn, forcing the department to reroute firefighters from other calls, Bruce said.

“Two firefighters died trying to save someone there. We take this very, very seriously,” Bruce said. “We thought someone was possibly caught in the dam.”

A third 16-year-old was filming the stunt from the shore, Bruce said.

Neither of the boys in the inflatable raft was wearing a life jacket.

“The nickname is the drowning machine,” he said. “It will hold people in and drown them before it spits them out.”

When firefighters arrived, Elgin police had the teens in custody on the island just south of the dam. The two teens who were in the raft were charged with disorderly conduct, Bruce said.

In the summer of 1974 Elgin firefighter Michael Whalen and fire Capt. Stanley Balsis both died while attempting to save someone who went over the dam on a $5 bet.

Whalen and Balsis were in an aluminum boat and had life jackets on, but once the boat capsized the men were pulled into the churning currents at the foot of the dam. The strength of the currents had stripped the life jackets from the men.

A 28-year-old Schaumburg man died after skidding off a jet ski and was swept over the dam in 1995. He drowned as he struggled to break free of the current below the 10-foot-high dam.

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