Washington on ice: Drills, ice breaking & an attempted rescue. Police PIO makes sure firefighters get credit.
Watch video of January 3 attempted rescue in Rock Creek
Members of the DC Fire & EMS Department spent Saturday on the Potomac River showing off their ice rescue skills. A week ago they were doing the same thing for real. That’s when a car was discovered in icy Rock Creek along the Rock Creek Parkway near P Street.
It turns out that 22-year-old Josh Kuhlman was dead. He had been in the water for quite some time before the car was discovered last Sunday morning. But the efforts of DC firefighters did not go unnoticed by the public information officer for the United States Park Police who was on the scene. Here are excerpts from an email Sgt. David Schlosser sent to STATter911.com:
The story is the job by DCFD. The crews went into deep water flowing pretty fast. The car had ice formed around it. The car was upside down, unstable on rocks, with little exposed. Fire personnel tied themselves off, stabilized the car a bit, went into waist deep freezing water and made the recovery. They could not see into the car so they did it all by feel. The water was so cold that the only reason it was not completely frozen over was the water moving. Ice floes passed by as they worked. They worked for quite some time.
The old joke among the police is that God made police officers so firefighters could have heroes. That Sunday morning I found the firefighters to be the true heroes. They did a job that we don’t see often under awful conditions. Were they just doing their job? Certainly, but “just their job” on this call was incredible!!
My hat off my frozen head to these firefighters!
Now, for another duty of DC firefighters during the freeze. Fireboat John H. Glenn Jr. often doubles as an ice cutter when the Potomac freezes. In today’s Washington Post, Michael Ruane wrote a nice article on spending the day breaking the ice with the crew from the Glenn. There are also some beautiful pictures by Jahi Chikwendiu.
Above is video from a similar visit I made in 2003.
And in just in case you missed it when we brought it back up as part of our most popular stories of 2009, below is the video of the collision last February that sidelined the Glenn for part of the winter.
