Fire Chief: Water Rescues Pose Multiple Dangers

As many as a dozen water rescues performed this week in Cookeville’s Willow Avenue corridor when flood waters stalled cars.

Cookeville Fire Chief Benton Young said they have personal flotation devices, rafts, and other tools that firefighters can use to navigate in the water. Young said floodwaters can be very dangerous.

“That’s why we have actually the rafts that we can deploy,” Young said. “We have ropes, rope teams and goes along with the swift water that we deploy ropes across the area that we can take and put the rafts in and, you know, we can use those ropes to guide the rafts.”

Young said firefighters are sometimes able to remove victims with a ladder or use their own flotation devices to help them walk, but each water rescue situation is unique and comes with its own dangers. Young said one of the biggest issues they deal with is the limited visibility that comes with high waters.

“The problem with the water when you get flooding like this is you don’t (know) what’s underneath you,” Young said. “You have manhole covers that can be dislodged and you can be just walking along and go right through that manhole cover and, you know, they can be ten, twenty feet deep.”

Young said some of other the challenges they see are electrical and chemical hazards when floods interfere with utility poles or sewer systems.

“Some of the newer electrical vehicles, the batteries can short out with, if they get water in them,” Young said. “So there’s several and it’s really, I mean you can sit here and name them all day long, but every incident’s just different and you just have to really manage it as you go on scene.”

Young said it only takes about six inches of water for water to move a car, at which point the engine is likely to fail and the driver will get stuck.

“I think a lot of times they think, ‘Well, I can make it,’ or, ‘The water’s not that deep,'” Young said. “And I think that’s their thought process. I don’t think anybody purposely does it. And then they get in a little bit too far and then that’s it.”

Young said their firefighters receive various levels of swift water rescue training from the Tennessee Fire Academy.

“We have several members that have been to that and we actually have a couple instructors for swift water,” Young said.