A routine fire department training exercise came at just the right time for two boaters at Hagg Lake Saturday.
The two men were fishing in a small boat when it flipped over, right in front of two members of the Gaston Fire District's Water Patrol Program who were on personal watercraft as part of a training exercise.
The firefighters, Eric Boyd of Gaston Fire and Trevor Storms of the Cornelius Fire Department, immediately pulled the men and their boat from the 52-degree water of the lake.
For Water Patrol Supervisor Randy Hoodenpyl, the scene was reminiscent of the first exercise of the program's first year, 2005. On a May Saturday that year, the volunteers came to the rescue of a woman who was badly hurt by a boat's propeller blade.
Since then water patrol members have responded to hundreds of incidents large and small at Washington County's premier water recreation site. Hagg Lake draws more than 650,000 visitors a year from throughout the region.
Like those visitors, many of the water patrol members come from outside Gaston. This year, for example, Gaston Fire is joined by firefighters and emergency medical technicians from the Cornelius, Mist-Birkenfeld and Washington County District 2 fire departments and Metro West Ambulance. All members volunteer their time to the effort.
We want to be out there and available, Gaston Fire Chief Roger Mesenbrink said. We view it as a courtesy. No lifeguard starts his day hoping he needs to make a daring rescue. That's how we see it. We're out there to be visible and talk to people so problems don't occur.
That doesn't mean the Water Patrol volunteers haven't seen their share of emergencies. For example volunteers once had to come to the aid of a family with an infant as their boat quickly took on water in the middle of the lake, towing it to shore with the personal watercraft.
That and similar experiences caused Gaston Fire to rethink how it administers the program. The district hopes to find a donor to start the summer of 2011 with a boat to replace the 8-year-old watercraft, which were out of service much of last summer because of maintenance and repair issues.
We've learned we can be more effective and have lower maintenance costs by running a boat, Chief Mesenbrink said. The boat also would have more towing ability, and more room for additional crew, patients and equipment.
This Memorial Day Weekend, however, Hagg Lake visitors can expect to see the familiar blue and white personal watercraft out on the lake with some of the same volunteers who have ridden them for five summers past.
Memorial Day weekend also begins the second year of another safety initiative at the lake: life-jacket loaner stations created by the Washington County Safe Kids Coalition. Like the Water Patrol, the life-jacket program relies entirely on donated equipment and volunteers from Gaston and neighboring fire departments, including Hillsboro.
The water patrol volunteers remind everyone to be careful and to wear life jackets when on the lake, because you can't always expect them to be conducting exercises like they were for the lucky boaters on Saturday.
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"immediately pulled out"... as he swims to the dock
TheCodyxb 5 months ago