A 28-year-old Wagga man is still missing after he went underwater in the Murrumbidgee River on Sunday evening and did not resurface.
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Tuesday marked the third day of the search and rescue operation, but the father-of-five was not found.
Acting Inspector Nigel Turney said they will continue to search until a team of specialist police divers decide to stop the operation.
“At this stage, there still is no body, so I guess we'll have to treat it as an operation, but the circumstances would appear to not be too favourable for him at this stage,” he said.
“Obviously it's a very slow process to conduct a search of a river this size, and as you've probably seen from just looking at the river it's moving rather swiftly.”
Acting Inspector Turney said emergency services also had to be mindful of their own safety.
“The police out there on the river have to watch out for their own safety as well, given the dangers that are inherent under the surface there,” he said.
“There's logs, twigs, rocks – everything under that river that you could possibly imagine – so they've got to be mindful of that as well.”
The man’s partner has been going back and forth to the river during the search.
Acting Inspector Turney said that police have been keeping the family updated throughout the search and rescue mission.
“I can only imagine it will be very hard – he's a young person, many of the family are interstate, I believe, and we have to just keep them updated as much as we can,” he said.
Wagga SES local controller Daniel Mahoney said crews continued searching the river until about 6:30pm on Tuesday evening.
“Our guys are calling it a day, and they'll be back tomorrow morning with the VRA guys to continue with the search for as long as we need to,” Mr Mahoney said.
“There's not much we can do other than what we are, really – we've got boats, we’ve got people in the water, and all we can do is hope.”
Mr Mahoney said the SES volunteers were doing well despite the situation
“When you've got a volunteer organisation, you've got to be wary of the guys and their jobs, so we need to make sure they’re okay with this as well,” he said.
“But all the guys are really wanting to get a result for the family – that's what we're concentrating on now.”
Acting Inspector Turney reminded swimmers to exercise great caution in the river.
“Realistically, in rivers like this where there's strong undercurrents, even the best swimmers could find themselves in difficulty, so they really need to be mindful.”