Two men survived an unplanned dip in the Des Plaines River Sunday night after their vehicle crashed near the river in Schiller Park just south of the Rosemont border, police said.
Schiller Park Fire Chief Peter Chiodo, in a news release, said the vehicle containing the men ended up in a forest preserve east of River Road and just west of the river after striking a guardrail on River Road near Winona Avenue shortly before 9 p.m.
Firefighters from Schiller Park and Rosemont searched the crash site, which “is dense with trees and underbrush,” Chiodo said.
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Because a witness insisted the occupants hadn’t returned to the roadway after abandoning the vehicle, the rescuers focused their efforts on the preserve, conducting both a ground and aerial search and using floodlights and heat-sensing cameras, Chiodo said.
Fearing the crash survivors were unaware of their proximity to the rain-swollen and fast-moving river, divers were called in, he said.
Meanwhile, a Schiller Park police officer on patrol spotted one of the survivors approximately two miles away, walking near the intersection of River Road and Cumberland Avenue.
That survivor, who Chiodo identified as a Niles resident, said he’d been swept downriver more than a mile before exiting just south of Irving Park Road.
Rescuers subsequently located the second survivor, who said he’d also escaped from the river.
Neither man appeared to have sustained serious injuries, Chiodo said.
Dennis Sullivan is a freelance reporter.