even pulling out of my driveway, i ll just sit there and watch people go by and they re going 40, 50 miles an hour. prepared to document any incident on her property with her digital camera, roberta snaps stills of an suv that slides off the road on to her front lawn. behind the wheel is one of her new young neighbors. the sheriff is already on scene. turns out the truck has hit a steel electrical junction box installed on roberta s property. the driver and his passengers are not hurt, but the accident dislodges high-voltage cables, which feed electricity to the entire neighborhood. the cables attached to the junction box are pulled out of the ground when the suv hits the box. now power is out for more than three dozen homes. switching her camera to video, roberta is ready to record anything else that might happen on her land. within the hour, new hampshire
clothes as quickly as possible. todd is winded, but his airway is clear. major albers assists with one of the other firefighters who also fell into the freezing water. miraculously, there are no serious injuries that day. it was a group effort. if they wasn t able to hold on to him on that bridge, we would have been downstream looking for the fireman. georgetown first responders transform luck from this bad day into improvements for future swift water rescues. the hope is that they ll be able to rely less on luck and more on preparedness. we ve learned a lot from the 95 event to where we re not wearing our turnout gear, and we re wearing life vests and we have a swift water team that is on standby for us. they ll be ready if babbling leavenworth creek ever decides to rage again.
while the force of the stream is crushing his chest against the bridge, the melt water s temperature is just above freezing, sapping whatever energy todd has left. responding to a call from another firefighter, sheriff major rick albers arrives on scene. the officer has just recently completed swift water rescue training. from my experience in training in swift water rescue, he wasn t going to be able to be pulled out just by his arms. they would had to have almost get him in half to get him up from that position. myself and a sheriff s deputy determined the only way we were going to get him out of the water was to pull him back upstream, away from the bridge, to get him out, because it was not working, trying to pull him straight up. on bunker pants, they have suspenders that go up, and i was able to feel down his
suspenders, and be able to grab as much as i could of the bucket pants and pull him. come on! with all his might, major albers yanks the fireman back upstream, but the waterlogged man is so heavy, he s pulling the officer in too. just at that moment, former paramedic, pam strong grabs the major. she grabbed a hold of my legs, which really helped me at that time. i will never forget it. and i was able to pull up enough and get his lower body, hips, upstream, and pull up enough that i got him up on to the bridge, up to safety. chief kelly and his team assess his injuries. they have two very serious concerns. hypothermia and water in his lungs. the team removes his cold, wet
traffic has increased a lot since these houses have gone in. but i ve found that sometimes even pulling out of my driveway, i ll just sit there and watch people go by and they re going 40, 50 miles an hour. prepared to document any incident on her property with her digital camera, roberta snaps stills of an suv that slides off the road on to her front lawn. behind the wheel is one of her new young neighbors. the sheriff is already on scene. turns out the truck has hit a steel electrical junction box installed on roberta s property. the driver and his passengers are not hurt, but the accident dislodges high-voltage cables, which feed electricity to the entire neighborhood. the cables attached to the junction box are pulled out of the ground when the suv hits the box. now power is out for more than three dozen homes. switching her camera to video, roberta is ready to record anything else that might happen