Dover and New Phila firefighters conduct water rescue exercises
DOVER (WJER) (Aug. 26, 2024) – Firefighters are keeping their skills sharp for not only emergencies in burning buildings, but also under the water.
Captain Brooks Ross says they spent a few hours last week beneath the Wooster Ave. bridge with New Philadelphia firefighters for water rescue training in the Tuscarawas River.
“We stretch a rope across the river and anchored a boat off it and then we that as a platform for our divers,” he said.
Ross says the departments conduct water rescue training about once a month, which usually includes the river one or two times a year. He says they will also train at Atwood and Tappan lakes — where vehicle recovery calls most often come from – as well as at area creeks and ponds.
“We try different types of environments,” he said.
The divers have on dry suits, which Ross says are like what they wear for fires, just that they’re made for underwater.
“You’re not supposed to get wet. Sometimes they leak,” Ross said. “They protect you from any kind of biological hazards, certain hazardous materials that might be in the water. If we’re searching for a car or anything like that, there’s going to be oils and gasoline, so that protects us,” he said.
He says they always strive to be better prepared, even though the department usually only gets one or two water rescue calls a year.
“Whether it’s a drowning or a vehicle in the water that we recover,” he said. “We try to keep up, because it’s a pretty dangerous environment, so we try to train pretty regularly on that.”
Ross says the firefighters chose to train in the river this time to improve techniques following their response and search in July for the bridge jumper who, unaware to them, had already made it out of the water unharmed.