PHOENIX – Friday morning rescuers with the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office were conducting simulations of saving a person trapped by rushing waters.
“We move in,” Kevin Kraayenbrink, the chief pilot with MCSO, said, “we don’t want to bump the car, so we hover right next to it and then the crew in the back will extricate or get the person inside. So they’re nervous, they’re scared, some of them jump. We practice our hand signals and talking on the PA and doing things like that, we want to make sure that they’re coming in.
The training drills get rescuers ready for the start of monsoon, because when rushing floods take over parts of the Valley it's up to these rescuers to be prepared.
“With car rescues,” Kraayenbrink said, “you just don’t have enough time to set up and do much. You’re moving to get them out of there as soon as possible. We’ve had past footage where cars are just literally going downstream after we get the person out of the car.”
No two rescues are ever the same so they have to prepare for anything and everything.
