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OGDEN — Heavy machinery is in the Weber River Thursday afternoon in an attempt to locate a young boy who fell into the water.
Divers and volunteer searchers have scoured the river bottom and river banks since Saturday looking for 4-year-old Corbin Anderson. Now track hoes have joined in the effort.
"Basically, the river's in our way so we're moving it," said Weber County Sheriff's Lt. Mark Lowther. "There's an existing channel to the west of the river that we're able to open up."
Equipment from both Weber County and private companies worked to clear a path, which will hopefully help authorities get more answers.
"What we're gonna do, is we're gonna move the river to that old channel — divert it from the main channel — and lower the flow of the river so we can hopefully get in there and recover this young boy," Lowther said.
Once they finish the new channel, river levels will be lowered by stopping the release of water from the Echo Reservoir upstream. It will take about 18 hours for the water to come down to a level where officials say divers will have a better chance of locating Corbin.
"We have two ideas that we think there's an excellent chance where we'll find him," Lowther said. "We've had a couple of state hydrologists in here this morning that looked at the river, and they've concurred that they think that he'll be in one of those two spots also."
Lowther said the whole plan came together rather quickly, and he hopes to have divers in the water sometime Friday.
