Evanston firefighter, Tim Migon, was anxious. Time is critical in any rescue situation and Migon was on the Evanston lakefront braving the wind waiting for a report that a group of rescue boats had found “victims” of a boating accident.
The victims were not real but instead were rescue mannequins placed along the shore as part of an Oct. 27 deployment training exercise involving the 25 rescue personnel with the Evanston Fire Department and a half dozen other fire departments.
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“We’re using all of our resources,” he said. “We get our boats in the water and get drones up. We triangulate the area and try to locate the victims.”
The 24-hour long exercise was hosted by the Evanston Fire Department and organized by the Illinois Water Rescue Task Force to practice water-based operations, which can be extremely dangerous and technical, said Spencer Kimura, deputy operations sections chief with the Mutual Aid Box Alarm System of Illinois.
Migon said the drills focus on the location and rescue of stranded boaters or swimmers and emergency boat operations. Such training opportunities allow regional water rescue personnel to pool highly trained and equipped personnel together to accomplish water rescue missions faster and more efficiently, Kimura said.
“Not every fire department, not every organization, throughout the state of Illinois has specialized rescue people to do this type of rescue,” he said. “What the mutual aid program does is to combine these organizations to formulate a team once they assemble at an incident.”
Teams in boats were challenged to find the rescue mannequins that had been placed along the shore earlier in the day. Some were partly hidden on the rocky shoreline while others were washed up on a beach.
“The idea is the only way to get to the rescue victim is from the water,” Kimura said. “They have to do a large area search.”
Migon said that the drill also allowed rescuers to practice what it would be like to save people during floods or other high water incidents.
“We have to be able to get our equipment on and out there as quickly as possible,’ he said. “Training is extremely important to all of us. It helps makes us better.”
Ronald Naida, with the Elk Grove Village Fire Department, was in one of the boats that found a rescue mannequin on the shore and brought it to shore.
“The real challenge is if the victim’s stuck on the rocks we have to beach the boat,” he said. “We have to pull the boat up on the rocks. One member has to get out and assess the victim and the other member has to stabilize the boat and we may have to call additional units for assistance.”
Brian L. Cox is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.