A pair of young girls had a close call on the Yukon River Wednesday evening in nearly the same spot a young woman drowned last Sunday.

Two men in the area at the time dove in and pulled the pair out of the current just above the intake, the white water paddling park, on the Riverdale side of the Yukon River as it flows through Whitehorse.

Once free of the swift current and out of the water, the two girls, aged 12 and 13, went to Whitehorse General Hospital for a checkup before being released.

Whitehorse RCMP and a man who helped rescue the girls are again calling for people enjoying the river to take safety precautions.

Marcus Waterreus was walking along the riverside trail at about 9 p.m. Wednesday when he first noticed the girls were in trouble. Neither girl sported a life-jacket.

'I was just heading further up the trail when I heard some screaming,' said Waterreus. 'I turned around and saw two heads bobbing in the current.

'Fortunately there was one other guy too, who had a life-jacket on, and he jumped in to get one of them. I could see he was having trouble getting her to shore and that the other one had nobody helping her out,' he said.

Though his instinct was to jump in after her, he was quite hesitant to do so because he wasn't sporting a life-jacket himself, Waterreus said.

'It's an extremely strong eddy current that comes back and recirculates back into the main current, which recirculates you back into the eddy,' said Waterreus, who has paddled a lot in the past.

'So it's continually going around and around. And where those two currents meet the tendency is to pull you down, so there are little whirlpools that are starting to form there.'

Both girls were breathing and conscious when they were hauled out of the river.

'I think there was some shock involved,' said Waterreus. 'They were quite scared. In fact, their reaction was to run away. We had to go get them again because you want to make sure they're OK.

'It was kind of frightening.'

Ambulance attendants and city firefighters arrived after being notified that the two girls needed help.

Both girls were fine, but they had quite a scare, said hospital spokeswoman Val Pike, noting just how fast currents sucked the pair into trouble.

We all have a role to play in keeping each other safe near water, she added.

'If you play near water, you have to wear a life-jacket,' said Pike.

The girls' parents weren't in the area, police said today.

'I really want the area to be marked well and that people are aware, because I know people are going to drown again,' said Waterreus. 'The river is only going to get higher from now until the middle of August.'

With the unusually hot weather, many rivers are higher and faster than normal due to larger volumes of runoff.

Over the past winter, a significant portion of the bank just up from the intake and next to the swirling eddy eroded away.

'It's (the river) totally changed from the years past and I think that's why people are taking it for granted,' Waterreus added.

Last Sunday evening, a 23-year-old woman drowned just metres from shore in the swirling current after falling off her inner tube. She hadn't been wearing a life-jacket at the time.

Another local paddler told the Star this morning that the second man who went to the young girls' aid last evening was one of the people who'd been meeting at the river during the evenings in a vigil for the woman who died Sunday.