By Valerie Schremp Hahn
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
ST. CHARLES, Mo. — “Every one of them has the potential to fall in.” Fire Capt. Steve Grote, talking of people who use the river’s amenities
When the firefighters on the St. Charles water rescue team see any activity along the Missouri River - workers on the Blanchette Bridge, hunters with their trucks parked at the boat ramp, boaters enjoying a summer day - they’re on alert.
“Every one of them has the potential to fall in,” said St. Charles Fire Department Capt. Steve Grote, as he and three colleagues ventured onto the river Thursday afternoon to check water conditions.
Grote was one of three St. Charles firefighters who pulled a man from the river after he jumped from the Blanchette Bridge on Tuesday afternoon. The man died soon afterward at a hospital.
The firefighters estimate they go on 12 to 15 rescues a year. People might get stranded in their boats or fall into the water accidentally. They’ve rescued college students stranded in trees above swirling floodwater, saved a sinking $200,000 pleasure boat by pumping water from it and retrieved a couple who got struck by lightning while camping on a sandbar.
The firefighters consider their jurisdiction to be the five-mile stretch of river that runs roughly from the Highway 370 bridge (Discovery) on the north end of St. Charles to the Page Avenue extension bridge (Veterans Memorial) on the south end. Specially trained members of the department work out of Station 4 on North Drive at Highway 94, where they can respond to the boat ramp at Blanchette Landing in about 10 minutes.
They house four boats at the station: a 24-foot fireboat equipped with a water pump, a 20-foot johnboat that maneuvers easily for most rescues and two smaller boats.
They pay special attention to the Discovery, Blanchette and Veterans Memorial bridges. During training exercises, they may steer the boats around the bridge supports, getting a feel for the swift-flowing water there. Unfortunately, people bent on committing suicide often resort to the bridges, they said.
“It’s just something about a bridge,” said Mike Morris, a Fire Department engineer who has worked on the river for about 30 years. “They see it, and then it happens.”
As he spoke, the johnboat he was riding in buzzed below the Blanchette, which on this day was about 80 feet above the 38-degree water. The water level was several feet lower when the man jumped in on Tuesday.
The firefighters often do special water rescue training on their own time and with their own money. They might rescue one another in the swirling waters of the Thunder River attraction at Six Flags, which is “a blast,” firefighter-paramedic Harry Stone said. At night, they’ll drop instructors off along the bank, and then rescuers have to find them with the help of night vision goggles and an infrared camera. In the summer, they go out on the water about once or twice a month to check the wing dikes and watch for new hazards.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Morris and firefighter-paramedic Tim Wersching are buddies who love to fish and hunt on the river on their own time.
“The key thing out here,” Morris said, “is knowing the river.”