First responders act quickly, out all night rescuing those trapped in floods

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — With a three-day stretch of severe weather, first responders have been working tirelessly with flooding rescues at the Stateline.

This weekend, Rockford Fire Department responded to over 120 calls on Saturday alone for various emergencies related to the heavy rain and flooding. The department had about 59 members rescuing many residents from stalled vehicles on streets all over the city’s boundaries. Rescuers were out until midnight Saturday night and three in the morning Sunday night/Monday morning with inflatable boats to get residents out of their cars and into safety.

District Chief Joe Montavon said firefighters try and train for every possible situation, but events like this weekend show it’s hard to train for everything.

“Saturday came on very rapidly,” Chief Montavon said. “We started dispatching people to multiple complaints. They started on one area of town, then another area of the city, and before you know it, we have multiple areas where we’re making rescues from people who are trapped. When the streets are underwater, it’s very hard for us to recognize exactly where those streets are and to see all the dangers in front of us. There’s no such thing as safe water.”

Chief Montavon said that his crew aims at responding to the most dangerous incident first, and when they were being dispatched to areas all over the city, it got very overwhelming.

“What looks like a simple creek on one day could turn into a raging river within minutes, as we saw over this weekend, so the other problem is the number of resources we can supply at one time,” Chief Montavon said. “It’s so easy to get overtaxed, and if we don’t recognize that right away, it’s hard for us to start reaching out to neighboring departments or to start calling back to more people and getting them and up our manning level to where we can make every rescue and attend every incident in a timely basis.”

Firefighter paramedic Adam Frisbie stressed the dangers of these waters and the impacts they can have should a person or vehicle get stuck.

“It’s an important factor to remember when you’re dealing with swift water and when you deal with these waters, that just six inches can take away a grown man just as well as 12 inches or a foot of water can sweep away any vehicle,” Frisbie said. “It can float a vehicle just with 12 inches of water.”

The chief said that storms like these continue to help train his crew for more severe weather in the future.

“We have things set in place to try to get ahead of that tonight, of course, with the potential storm will be more prepared than we were each day consecutively,” Chief Montavon said. “We adapt as we go.”

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