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Fire Department Boats Collide During Training Exercise PDF Print E-mail
St. Louis, MO. - A river training exercise turned into a real emergency for St. Louis firefighters Saturday morning. Two of those firefighters got hurt. Still, it could turn out to be a good thing, in the long run.



About members of the department's Marine Task Force and Swift Water Rescue team had to shift from "training" to "the real thing" in an instant.

The two men were hurt when two rescue boats collided on the Mississippi River near the MacArthur Bridge south of downtown.

Investigators weren't sure if floating debris knocked one boat into the other or something else.

"We don't know if they got caught in a tow or caught in the wake of a tug," said Chief Dennis Jenkerson.

After tending to a pair of shaken up comrades, the other half dozen firefighters went right back to training for troubles experience has told them are sure to arise on the Mississippi.

"Oh, it could have been much worse with the power of this river. Things happen so quickly," Jenkerson said.

There was the rescue of a woman in February of 2007. She was stranded in the frigid water; her shirt sleeve frozen to a riverboat gangway.

There were the two fishermen a few months later, stranded at the foot of a bridge until firefighters boated out to save them.

Then of course, there was the big one: a runaway floating casino and mass rescue operation, when a barge knocked the Admiral Riverboat from its moorings more than 10 years ago, in April 1998.

The chief applauded his firefighters' response Saturday.

"They got the two firefighters out quickly, secured both boats, got them out of the water, got them onto the back boards. You can see where the training paid off. These guys did a good job, protecting their fellow firefighters. They did a great job," Jenkerson said.

Neither of the injured firefighters was thrown into the water. The chief described the injuries as minor; one firefighter treated for an leg injury; the other a hand injury.



Created: Saturday, 19 Jul 2008, 9:18 PM CDT
http://www.myfoxstl.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=7021228&version=1&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1
 
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