Findlay Fire Department Readying For Water Rescues

The Findlay Fire Department recently conducted some boat drills on Lake Cascades.

Battalion Chief Matt Cooper says they hold the refresher course each spring and go over lake and river rescue procedures so they’ll be ready.

“Every year it happens, we get called out to the reservoir for boaters in distress and the possibility of river rescues.”

Cooper says they take their three boats to Lake Cascades, the reservoirs and to the Blanchard River in the spring to get their firefighters back into the swing of things and familiarized with their equipment.

Cooper reminds boaters that the wind can really kick up on the reservoir and that the trash cans there are color-coded, so if a boater is in distress they can relay what color of trash cans they see and the fire department will know what part of the reservoir to respond to.

“It was an Eagle Scout project a couple years ago, and one of our firefighters thought about it because it’s such a big body of water it’s hard to see all the way across and we want to get to the people quicker when they’re in distress.”